
Class 
Book 






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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



The Primitive Family 

as an Educational 

Agency 



By 
Arthur James Todd, Ph.D. 

Of the Department of Sociology, University of Illinois 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

(Tbe ttnicFterbocftet preas 

1913 



XT 



Copyright, 19x3 

BY 

ARTHUR JAMES TODD 



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<7^ 

©CI.A351001 



i 



M. G. T. 

WHOSE QUALITIES AS COMRADE AND HOME-MAKER HAVE MADE THIS 
STUDY POSSIBLE 



PREFACE 

IT is a truism that an institution can be understood 
only through its history. The notion of change 
and development in ideas and institutions is fxmda- 
mental to any sound science of society. Yet when we 
attempt to apply this principle to such concrete institu- 
tions as say, property, or the family, we are struck with 
the rigidity of the ideas and sentiments in which they 
are conceived. The popular mind accepts to a certain ^"^ 
extent the general idea of progress and may not stop 
to bewail the death of the good old times which alone 
can usher in the new. But let the sociologist or the 
philosopher suggest that property and the family as 
we know them were not always so, but, since they are 
both largely social products, have varied enormously 
as social needs varied — and the popular mind becomes 
eminently reactionary. This cannot be, it says; mono- 
gamy and private property in lands and goods and 
women are innate characters of man, were always so, 
and always will be so. Unfortunately this attitude 
of mind is not confined to the obviously untrained but 
lingers with those who have had opportunities for 
knowing better. 

Growing discontent with such static conceptions of 
social processes prompted the study which follows. 
On the one hand, we are confronted by cries of alarm 



vi Preface 

at the imminent dissolution of society owing to the 
apparent ^'break-up of the family." On the other, 
with the demand for a more efficient type of education. 
The social aspect of the question may be formulated 
somewhat thus: Can the family change its form and 
function without permanent injury to social stability 
and welfare? The educational question takes this 
form: If the family has heretofore been the basic 
educational agency but is losing its educational effi- 
ciency, can we devise a more adequate type of educa- 
tion with other social institutions predominant in its 
foundations? 

Whatever the answers to these questions, it is evident 
that a sound notion of certain typical social institutions 
is essential to the educator who would make education 
a vital factor in a conscious program for further social 
development. It is equally evident that some acquaint- 
ance with the history of present institutions — and 
notably the family and the school — is necessary to 
illuminate the present crisis in family life. A review of 
the domestic life of our forbears really yields abundant 
cause for gratification at the enormous distance we have 
traveled and at the comparative stability and harmony 
of modem family life. Such phases of primitive 
domestic life as promiscuity, group-marriage, trial- 
marriage, the trifling grounds for divorce, absence of 
chastity, infanticide, and other forms of parental neglect 
and cruelty, lack of filial piety, hazy notions of kinship, 
etc., are milestones worth while recalling if for no other 
reason than to measure our progress. 
^ Y Hence in the general conclusion of our study we can 
^ face squarely and with the utmost optimism the fact 



Preface vii 

that the family has changed its form and function many 
times in the course of its age-long evolution. The 
indications are that it is changing now and will continue 
to change in response to changes in general social needs 
and in the alignment of social institutions. Neither 
is there anything disconcerting in the fact that the 
family never has been the type and foundation of all 
education. If, owing to changes in the industrial and 
religious world, the family is losing much of its educa- 
tional significance, this simply means that we must find 
other sanctions and other bases in its place.V From the 
very fact that the family in times past has shown itself 
so variable and flexible, are we not warranted in looking 
for such new adjustments in its form and content as to 
make it an increasingly valuable social institution? 

In the preparation of this work I have had constantly 
in mind two classes of students: those who were looking 
for an outline sketch of the early evolution of the family ; 
and those who, with myself, have felt the all too obvious 
lack of materials illustrating methods and organization 
of primitive education. Histories of education must 
fill up the gap now usually left, and pay more respectful 
attention to primitive education. Because a thing is 
primitive does not mean that it is to be overlooked or 
despised. Its sympathetic study may reveal unsus- 
pected treasure. Witness only the revival of dancing 
in our most modem schools: as I have herein shown, 
dancing was not only one of the chief subjects in the 
primitive curriculum, but was one of the most effective 
agencies for social control ; the protagonists of dancing 
would greatly strengthen their arguments and their 
methods by a study of their savage predecessors. 



viii Preface 

Other elements in the modern eurriculum might profit 
similarly. 

It would be impossible in this place to acknowledge 
fully my indebtedness to the many friends who have 
offered encottragement and help in the course of this 
work, and who have shared the drudgery of reading 
manuscript and proof. I must, however, offer a tribute 
to the memory of the late Professor Sumner, whose 
monumental collection of ethnographical notes has 
been made accessible through the courtesy of Professor 
A. G. Keller of Yale University. Thanks are due also 
to the authors and publishers who have courteously 
granted permission to quote freely from their books. 
My bibliography attests in part the indispensable aid 
which I have received from those "silent partners," 
whose works are enumerated. 

A. J. T. 
Urbana, November i8, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface oo 

CHAPTER 

I Introductory i 

II Primitive Marital Relations . . .11 
(i) Promiscuity and Group Marriage. 

III Primitive Marital Relations . . -33 

(2) Trial Marriage, Divorce, Polygamy. 

IV Primitive Notions of Kinship and Relation- 

ship 55 

V Primitive Parental and Filial Relations . 91 

VI Aims and Content of Primitive Education . 141 

VII Methods and Organization of Primitive 

Education 181 

VIII General Summary and Conclusion . . 226 

Selected Bibliography . . . . .231 

Index . 243 



i^ 



The Primitive Family as an 
Educational Agency 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

Forces in Education. — Education in its broadest and 
best sense is an organic process. At the same time 
it is also a result^ the sum of an infinitely complex 
set of forces, many of which are controllable, some of 
which are not, at least not yet. But it is the manipu- 
lation of the controllable elements in man*s environ- 
ment which has raised him out of beastdom and 
savagery to his present more promising level. If he 
shall continue to rise he must continue to manipulate. 
But just which of the forces and influences that make 
up the total of his education are the variables which 
he can and must control? There is the rub; there 
we get entangled in a mesh of diverse opinion. Yet 
there is the most vital and practical problem of human 
life which you and I as teacher, parent, statesman, 
philanthropist, must face and work out vigorously 
and in all honesty. )( Which are the supreme forces in 
a man's education? Experience? His own instincts? 



rr 



2 Primitive Family and Education 

His family? Religion? Life in society? Each and 
all of these have been urged. ' For the present we 
propose to consider the claims of the family as an 
element in education, though naturally enough it will 
be impossible to isolate it utterly from the others. 

The Faimly the Fundamental School? — In a protest 
formulated against the proposal of the Federation of 
Women's Associations in Germany (1900) that the 
government should undertake the systematic develop- 
ment of kindergartens and found training schools for 
kindergarten teachers, Herr Beetz of Gotha drew up 
a series of propositions which represented the attitude 
of the old conservative schoolmen. First on the list 
occur the following: 

"A — I. (a) The history of civilization proves the family 
to be the basis of all moral development. The family is 
the first, most natural, and most indispensable place of 
education — not only of the children, but also of the parents. 

(b) The kindergarten encroaches, without justifica- 
tion or understanding, on these inalienable rights and 
duties, and thus injures the moral training of individual 
children, and also hinders the progressive moral develop- 
ment of the parents. 

2. (a) Sociology shows the family to be the founda- 
tion of the state. It is the first and most important 
source of national strength, physical, intellectual, and 
moral, in all its struggles — ^internal or external."^ 

At first sight we might have been incHned to let 
pass the first two of Herr Beetz's propositions; but 
the third, in spite of its axiomatic ring, tends to cast 

^Edtic. Rev., XX., 323-4. 



Introductory 3 

suspicion on the validity of the others. For, as a matter 
of fact, sociology repudiates the conclusion which 
Herr Beetz imputes to it. If sociology has done 
nothing else, it has at least shown the enormous com- 
plexity of the social process and demonstrated that 
it lends itself to no such simpliste explanation as this 
gentleman offers. But this is simply a fair sample of 
the deliverances of that class of persons for whom the 
long and short of education is the maintenance of the 
present order; and should be taken not as educational 
nor social law and gospel but merely as a partisan 
program with all its limitations and half truths. But 
unfortunately for the free and honest study or dis- 
cussion of educational problems, this very conserva- 
tism and partisanship are all too common. Our own 
land is by no means free from them. It is not so much 
partisanship, however, as mere perfunctory *'rounding- 
out'* of the subject that has led certain writers of 
educational texts to generalize somewhat broadly and 
hastily on the subject of primitive education. X Take, <^ 
for example, Professor Monroe's dictum: 

"The fundamental social institution itself — ^the family — 
is in the earliest times the sole educational institution."^ 

No less summary is this sentence from Professor 
Bagley's The Educative Process: 

"In the most primitive forms of human society, the 
home is the sole agency of formal education, involving, 
in addition to the fundamental functions just mentioned, 
conscious instruction in whatever crude arts of hunt- 

^ Hist, of Educ, 6; cf. Munroe, The Educational Ideals 231. 



4 Primitive Family and Education 

ing and warfare the adult members]: of the family may 
practice."^ X 

Other examples of what might almost be called the 
family superstition in education might easily be 
culled from pedagogical classics still in enormous 
vogue; for instance, this from Pestalozzi: **a man's 
domestic relations are the first and most important 
of his nature"; *'it is the domestic virtues which 
determine the happiness of a nation . . . the home 
is the true basis of the education of humanity. . . ."^ 

The Problem. — Perhaps then it may not prove 
a gratuitous task, nor ** barren scholarship," to under- 
take an investigation of the educational function of 
the family in ethnic society, to ascertain whether or 
not *'the family is the first, most natural, most indis- 
pensable agency in education," etc. That this is not 
an idle question, or of purely scholastic interest, is 
abundantly proved by the experience of nearly every 
one who has to deal publicly with children. Every 
superintendent of schools called upon to discipline 
a child or administer compulsory attendance meets 
some irate parent who orders him to halt with the 
formula, '^This is my child, I can do with him as I like." 
Every judge, probation officer, humane society agent 
or director of an institution for children has been 
confronted with the same indignant outburst. Even 

3L. c, 26; cf. Laurie, Pre-Christian Edtic., 7; Chamberlain, The 
Child and Childhood, etc., 234; T. Davidson, A History of Education. 

4 Baron de Guimps, Pestalozzi, His Life and Works, N. Y., 1890, 
p. 77; Misawa, Modern Educators, 125; Barnard, Pestalozzi and His 
Educational System, 665-6, 716; cf, Herbart's Outlines of Educational 
Doctrine, 3i8jf. 



Introductory 5 

more strikingly does it crop out in connection with 
child labor and factory inspection laws. In fact, 
wherever church, or industry, or other organizations 
are attempting to exploit the child and will brook no 
public interference, there one is sure to find the parent 
trotted out as the supreme and final source of all 
authority over the child. That the superintendent 
of a great city system of schools could say, "Parents 
are the child's worst enemies"; that Holland could 
fight fifty years over the rights and place of the private 
school in the public system — a question almost wholly 
of parental rights; that a church-directed assault is 
going stormily on now in France against the public 
school in the name of les droits du pere de famille: 
such facts signify that the family in education is not 
a dead issue. The assumption of the family's primacy 
in education is not infrequently based on just the 
argument that the savage gives for his customs: "We 
do not know why, but our fathers did so, and we can 
do no other. " The common run of mankind are quite 
willing to rest upon this form of reasoning and to 
believe in the divine institution of the family — if not 
in its daily working out ! — especially if sufficient politi- 
cal or ecclesiastical pressure is applied. But even 
granting the validity of this appeal to the fathers — 
after all not an altogether displeasing form of ancestor 
worship — we should like to know what our fathers 
actually thought and did about the matters concerning 
which their authority is invoked. The parent appeals 
to history to justify his "right to his own child"; the 
church appeals to history in defense of family rights 
when it desires to impose its own exclusive will upon 



6 Primitive Family and Education 

both child and parent (quite forgetting such texts as 
Matthew x., 35, 37 ; xxiii., 9 ; Mark iii., 31-5) ; the lawyer 
invokes the sacredness and antiquity of the family 
in his efforts to block the court's attempt to separate 
a child from a pestilential home and give it a chance 
for Hfe in a decent environment. The only way to 
deal intelligently with such contentions is to meet 
them on their own ground, and to ascertain what 
actually has been the nature of the familial and parental 
relations, what actually has been the educational 
contribution of the family ; whether it has any divinity 
other than that acquired in its evolution. Such are 
the questions this study tries to answer. The facts 
offered in good faith can only be used, however, by 
those who rest their judgment on evidence and not 
on dogma. 

Methodology. — In the working out of such a prob- 
lem much depends upon the methods employed. 
We might begin, it is true, with a deductive argument 
based on genetic psychology, and might draw valid 
conclusions as to primitive psychology without becom- 
ing committed absolutely to the recapitulation theory. 
A better method of procedure, however, seems to be 
this: to reconstruct, if possible, a view of primitive 
society; and to examine the various forces, institutions, 
conditions, operating in that society, which could 
contribute to such a process. The problem of the 
present study is to determine what part the family 
played in this process of education. It will be our 
first business, then, to determine the relation of the 
family to society as a whole in primitive times. By 
deduction we ought to be able to estimate its power 



Introductory 7 

as an educative instrument. This will constitute 
the first chapters of our study. Lest the results thus 
obtained should appear intangible and barren, it is 
proposed to attack the problem also inductively. 
Ethnography should yield materials for a comparative 
study of mind in the making. The relation of parent 
to child, parental affection, parental neglect and 
cruelty, filial respect, family teaching, tribal disci- 
pline, etc., — all these are vital matters bearing on the 
family as an educator. A conclusion drawn from such 
data should have great bearing on the deductions pre- 
viously made, and should knit up the whole argument 
into a reasonable affirmation. 

Perhaps a word should be added as to the methods 
pursued in the handling of ethnographic materials. 
While the prime purpose of this study is educational, 
much of its matter must be drawn from the stores of 
anthropology and ethnography. In drawing upon and 
using such stores, I have constantly been aware of the 
dangers involved and have endeavored to employ all 
due caution in interpreting the data. Reference will 
be made in the proper places to current criticisms upon 
the validity of certain data and methods. But at the 
outset it may be well to mention two or three general 
cautions against pitfalls likely to entrap the student. 
In the first place, the method of ''survivals": while 
I have adopted the evolutionary theory in ethnology and 
beHeve that the "degeneration" theory of the modem 
savage is altogether unsound, yet it is by no means 
evident that every tribe of savages is a survival and 
to be taken as a fair sample of primitive man. There 
is much truth in Mr. Talcott Williams's criticism of this 



8 Primitive Family and Education 

method and in his theory of "pressure** to account for 
certain low grade cultures. ^ Nor is Sir Henry Maine's 
caution against imputing antiquity and generality 
to certain modem savage practices, which are rather 
lapses than universal traits, lightly to be disregarded. 
Further, and this with particular reference to primitive 
"mental outfit," we might record as sage advice a remark 
of Mr. Dudley Kidd in his charming book on savage 
childhood : 

"As a matter of fact, there is nothing savages — and 
even savages high in the scale — think less about than the 
topics which fill modern works on anthropology or ethnog- 
raphy. The Kafirs might talk for five consecutive days 
about a calf that had died, but they would not talk five 
consecutive minutes about evil spirits, nor for five seconds 
about that delight of some writers, the evil eye."^ 

Yet these cautions are directed rather against the 
abuse than the careful use of current methods. A 
reading of the argument which follows should show 
whether these methods have been used with discretion 
or not. Finally, it has not been found practicable 
to use any close statistical method, from the difficulty 
in getting strictly comparable units. 

Primitive Mind. — For reasons of space we are 
compelled to omit from this study a detailed account 
of the more characteristic traits of primitive life. 
We must content ourselves, therefore, with the merest 
catalogue of those phases of primitive life and thought 

s "Was Primitive Man a Modern Savage?" in Smithson. Rep. i8g6, 
i., 541-8. Cf. Mr. J. R. Swanton's vigorous criticism of current methods 
of determining what is and what is not "primitive "in anthropology. — 
Amer. Anthrop., x., n. s., 457-9. ^ Savage Childhood, 146. 



Introductory 9 

which bear upon the present topic. Among these 
must be noted the bareness and uncertainty of savage 
Hfe; for despite eighteenth-century philosophizing, the 
savage is neither free, nor ''happy" in any adequate 
sense of the word. Perhaps the most striking char- 
acter of primitive Hfe is the narrowness of its range of 
interests. Most of the savage's attention, hence his 
education, focused on his stomach; yet we must 
beware of censtuing unduly his belly-philosophy or 
his indolence, for, as Professor Ward reminds us, the 
world has not yet reached a stage where the physical 
and temporary interests of mankind have not been 
in the ascendant. The "mind of primitive man'* has 
been for half a century the football of ethnographers 
and sociologists. Is his mind the same as, similar to, 
identical with, the equivalent of, or absolutely different 
from our own? Has he any mind to speak of, or are 
his mental powers really superior to those of civiHzed 
men? A pretty insubstantial web of fallacy has been 
woven about these points. For my own part I hold 
the savage mind to differ quantitatively and qualita- 
tively from otir own. The differences are due, first, 
to different modes of conceiving experience (as MM. 
Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl have ably shown); and 
second, to differences in the cosmic and social envi- 
ronments. After all, these two differences reduce 
to one, since it is impossible to mark off man absolutely 
from his environment. But the quality of savage mind 
which perhaps most profoundly illuminates our sub- 
ject is its hazy sense of personality, the difficulty it 
experiences in marking off its ''self* from other selves; 
in other words, the absence of sharp dualisms. This 



lo Primitive Family and Education 

is revealed in creation myths, in primitive notions of 
kinship and relationship, in the almost imiversal 
savage belief in metamorphosis, in the savage's identi- 
fication of "self* with the name, shadow, dream-self, 
"likeness," clothing and other property, feces, etc. 
It also comes out clearly in savage zoomorphism, 
which we consider more fundamental than anthro- 
pomorphism and animistic religion. Certain mimetic 
funeral rites once common and found still in Russia 
offer interesting evidence of this dim sense of person- 
ality. And the widespread belief in "possession" 
by good or evil spirits further confirms the principle. 
It must suffice, then, to posit the narrow range of 
primitive life interests, the inflexibility resultant from 
this circumscribing of interest, with its concomitant 
an apparent, though only apparent, indolence and 
inattention; the childlikeness of primitive mind, 
manifested, for example, in improvidence, volatility, 
feeble powers of memory in general, and lack of self- 
control; the "superstition" of savagery, which we 
might easily show to be but incomplete science; a 
general dullness of savage sensibilities ; a meager sensory, 
and therefore conceptual, range; finally, a very hazy 
notion of "self" or "personality." With these points 
in mind we pass now to the organization of the primitive 
family. 



CHAPTER II 

PRIMITIVE MARITAL RELATIONS 

I. Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 

;. Economic and Biological Basis of the Family. — The 

family is a strictly pragmatic institution both in 
origin and development. It is rooted in physiology, 
economics, and the mores. The preponderance of one 
or other of these elements is determined largely by the 
culture status of the people in which the particular 
form obtains. It is divine only in the same sense 
that language, or art, or the human mind, or natural 
selection is divine. It is sacred for the reason that 
it is a form in which human activity has been moulded 
to the advantage of the race, and for no other. Its 
origin was prosaic enough. In the beginning it was 
not a refuge, an ark of peace and contentment, a shelter 
from the world, a center of aesthetic enjoyment, or even 
a sure recuperative arrangement. It was simply and 
solely an improved bread- winning and breeding device, 
whereby man might increase his brain capacity through 
economic leisure. Whatever of poetry and ideaHza- 
tion attaches to the family nowadays has been won only 
through long cycles of experience, during which the 
intelligence and feelings of men have developed to the 

II 



12 Primitive Family and Education 

point that they are able to read new meanings into 
old forms. This is only another example of the insti- 
tution evolving along with other institutions and 
reflecting their changes. For we are not to imagine 
that the family has persisted from the beginnings 
in its present apparently fixed form. On the con- 
trary, it has varied widely, and will probably con- 
tinue to vary. Morgan well said, *'It must advance 
as society advances, and change as society changes 
even as it has done in the past."' Much of the 
turgid eloquence which has been inflicted upon us in 
the name of discussion of the family would have been 
spared had the champions of one or another view 
based their arguments on a study of the entire social 
systems forming the matrix of the family institution, 
instead of resting upon a priori theories and an attempt 
to justify them by the analytic method. It is evident 
that the family in the course of its evolution has served 
a variety of human needs, according to special local 
requirements. It is also probable, if our estimate of 
primitive mind be correct, that the family was differ- 
ently regarded according to the different conceptual 
systems surrounding it. ^ 

The Family the Social "Cell"?— The social service 
of the family in human evolution is indubitable, 
though I am inclined to suspect that the emphasis 

^Ancient Society, 491. 

= Caution must be observed in using anthropological data relating 
to the family, for, as Gomme points out, when we are dealing with 
savage society the terms family and tribe do not connote the same 
institution as with us {Folklore as an Hist. Science, 236) ; cj. Schrader, 
Prehist. Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, 396: "It seems, therefore, 
almost impossible to establish a primeval term for the concept 'family.' " 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 13 

laid upon it in Mr. Fiske's theory is excessive ; and that 
it is by no means so certain as he would have us believe 
that the family has been the motivating force in pro- 
longing human infancy or vice versa, and hence the 
motivating force in mental and social evolution. 
This brings up the whole question of the relation of 
the family to society. Is it true, as it is currently 
asserted, that "the family is the most ancient and 
sacred of human institutions"? Or is there any basis 
for the stock generalization that the family is the unit 
of societal life, and the parental relation the germ of 
organized society? Or are we any nearer the truth 
if we insist that social life is the source of the parental 
bond and of the family? Dozens of citations bearing 
on both sides of this controversy might be adduced; 
we shall content ourselves, however, with only two 
typical statements. The first from Mr. Fiske: 

''But with our half -human forefathers it is not difficult 
to see how infancy extending over several years must have 
tended gradually to strengthen the relations of the children 
to the mother, and eventually to both parents, and thus 
give rise to the permanent organization of the family. 
When this step was accomplished we may say that the 
Creation of Man had been achieved. For through the 
organization of the family has arisen that of the clan or 
tribe, which has formed, as it were, the cellular tissue out 
of which the most complex human society has come to be 
constructed."^ 

3" The Meaning of Infancy," Essay xli., in Excursions of an Evolu- 
tionist, 289; cf. id. "Outlines of Cosmic Philos.," chap, xvi., xxi., 
xxii.; Maine, Ancient Law, 3d. Am. ed., 121; Espinas, Les Societes 
Animates; Westermarck, Hist, of Human Marr., 50; Sutherland, Origin 



14 Primitive Family and Education 

The second we choose from Bucher's Entstehung der 
Volkswirtschaft ^: 

"Recent ethnographers have been at great pains to show 
that mother-love is a universal trait existing at every stage 
of culture. Indeed it goes hard against the grain to deny 
to our own kind a feeling which we see so charmingly 
expressed in many species of animals. Yet only too many 
records are at hand to prove that the psychic bond between 
parents and children is first and foremost a fruit of culture 
{eine Frucht der Kultur) , and that among the lower peoples 
the barest care for self-existence outweighs all other mental 
operations; indeed nothing beside it exists (ilberhaupt 
nichts vorhanden ist)/* 

Before going farther we should raise a word of 

and Growth of the Moral Instinct; Lippert, KuUurgeschichte, {., 75; 
Groos, Play of Man, 334; Schrader, Prehist. Antiq., 393; Darwin, Desc. 
of Man, i., 77, says guardedly: "The feeling of pleasure from society 
is probably an extension of the parental or filial affections; and this 
extension may be in chief part attributed to natural selection, but 
perhaps in part to mere habit." See also Michelet's charming tri- 
bute to the family in his little book, Nos Fils; also the Encyclique 
"Rerum Novarum" of Pope Leo XIII; Comte, Le Play, Schaffle {Bau 
u.Leben i., 66), L. Stein {Die Sociale Frage, etc.), Ren6 Worms {Organ- 
isme et Societe) all make the family the cell, or the seed, or the unit of 
Society. Spencer calls it the ancient social unit as opposed to the 
modern notion of the individual as the social unit; see also J. Decorse, 
inUAnthropologie, xvi., 652. 

4 2 Aufl,, 19. Other expressions, such as " grenzenlose Selbstsucht," 
and "Der Wilde denkt nur an sich,'' occur; Steinmetz attacks this view 
in his " Verhaltnis zwischen Eltern u. Kinder" {Ztscft.f. Socialwissen- 
schaft, {., 607-31); see also Giddings, Prin. of Sociol. (1896), 229; 
Lippert, i., 70; Gomme, /. c, 236-7; Jevons, Intro, to Hist, of Religion, 
195; Solotarofif, in Am. Anthrop., xi., 231-2; Barth, Die Philosophic 
der Geschichte, etc., 377-84; Cosentini, La Sociologie GinHique, chap, 
viii.; Eleutheropulos, Soziologie, 38-53; Zenker, Die Gesellschaft, ii., 
53-8 ; Loria, La Sociologia, 90 ff. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 15 

protest against the manifest exaggeration of self-in- 
terest ascribed by this writer to primitive men. Is 
it true that "all primitive men are egoists"?^ No; 
if true at all it is only half true; for the moment one 
utters the word "men/' he is committed to a belief in 
man as a societal product, and social life is only possible 
as some form of cooperation, however crude, tones down 
man's supposedly invincible egoism. No man can be 
a strict-construction individualist and remain man. 
He is inevitably a compound of self and other-self. 
And the instinct for service or sacrifice is just as funda- 
mental, just as "natural," as the instinct for self-pres- 
ervation. The needs of the developing organism and 
its milieu determine when and how these tendencies or 
instincts shall appear. 

" Contact " Theory. — Such variances of opinion reveal 
the inherent weakness in the attempt to establish hard 
and fast causal relations between social phenomena. 
It is probably true that neither did the family grow out 
of society, nor is society a mere extension of the family 
relation; but that both arose concurrently out of some 
primeval tropism. Physiologists describe the tendency 
of insects to burrow themselves into the soil for pro- 
tection, to get imder a bit of stone or clod of earth ; the 
feeling of contact with the solid substance begets a sense 
of safety and well-being. It is not unhkely that such 
a procedure might develop into some such crude mani- 
festation of sociabiHty as that of sheep or cattle which 
bunch themselves closely together in times of danger, 
or in times of pleasurable rest. Why should not this 
crude sociability have survived in human gregarious- 

s McGee in Rep. Bureau of Amer. Ethnology, xix., 830^. 



r6 Primitive Family and Education 

ness? Why should not the safety-contact and the 
pleasure-contact unite to produce such a social in- 
strument as the bond of mother and child, or of husband 
and wife? I am disposed to refer both the parental 
and the social bond to some remote manifestation of 
contact pleasure, the more so from observation of the 
large part which this element plays still in human rela- 
tions. Mr. Stephen Phillips puts this exquisitely in his 
"Marpessa": 

"And I shall sleep beside him in the night 
And fearful from some dream shall touch his hand 
Secure; or at some festival we two 
Will wander through the lighted city streets; 
And in the crowd I *11 take his arm and feel 
The closer for the press. So shall we live. " 

Crawley bases his whole study of marriage on a theory 
of contact but works it out to conclusions which we 
cannot accept in their entirety. He says: 

"Ideas of contact are at the root of all conceptions of 
human relations at any stage of culture; contact is the one 
universal test, as it is the most elementary form, of mutual 
relations. Psychology bears this out, and the point is psy- 
chological rather than ethnological. . . . In this connection, 
we find that desire or willingness for physical contact is an 
animal emotion, more or less subconscious, which is character- 
istic of similarity, harmony, friendship, or love. Through- 
out the world, the greeting of a friend is expressed by 
contact, whether it be nose-rubbing, or the kiss, the em- 
brace, or the clasp of hands; so the ordinary expression of 
friendship by a boy, that eternal savage, is contact of arm 
and shoulder. More interesting still, for our purpose, is the 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 17 

universal expression, by contact, of the emotion of love. . . . 
Again the pathology of the emotions supplies many curious 
cases, where the whole being seems concentrated upon the 
sense of touch, with abnormal desire or disgust for contact 
. . . contact not only plays an important part in the life 
of the sotd, but must have had a profound influence on the 
development of ideas, and it may now be assumed that 
ideas of contact have been a universal and original constant 
factor in human relations and that they are so still. "^ 

Interrelation of Family and Society. — We may as- 
sume, then, that the most inevitable social relation in 
the beginning must have been that simple form of 
mother and child. The Pithecanthropos or some still 
more remote ancestor was memher of his mother before 
becoming that of any horde or group whatsoever. 
Man may or may not have lived in hordes; that is a 
matter for speculation; but he was mothered^ at least 
before birth. As often remarked, maternity was a 
fact, paternity a presumption. Civilization is cer- 
tainly not based on * 'family-sense" or "family instinct," 
but rather on the biological relations between mother 
and child. Yet having said this much what have we 
said? It would be completely begging the question to 
go on to assert that from the fact of maternity springs 
the whole crop of social relations with their infinite 
variety and complexity. To insist on the fact of 
maternity is by no means to insist on its unique im- 
portance, either genetically or tmiversally. It is an 
idle question after all — the priority of any one social 
relation. We know that the family, at least in this 
rudimentary form, was inevitable in the scheme of 

< Crawley, Mystic Rose, 76, 77, 78. 

2 -^ 



1 8 Primitive Family and Education 

things. We also know that the larger group life existed 
and was perhaps equally inevitable. Experience justi- 
fies the induction that without either the race must 
have perished. 7 With children as with republics 
it is vastly easier to beget them than to maintain them. 
It is easy to see what would have happened to the be- 
getting or parental function without the maintaining and 
sustaining aid of the group life. Further, we know that 
often the group interest prevailed over the family inter- 
est and that children were sacrificed for **the advantage 
of the whole." How much sense of tragedy was mixed 
with this grim practical logic we do not know. Even 
when the family took on a more fixed and enduring 
form by including the father, still the physical bond of 
mother and child was invaded and overridden by the 
group bond and infanticide was commonly practiced. 
The two instincts of self-maintenance and self-per- 
petuation were in constant conflict, and remain so to 
this present day. The family represents a variable 
compromise between the two. ^ 
^^ The Family a Social Institution.-^We saw a little 

while ago that the family is rooted in physiology, 
economics, and the mores. Its origin is to be found 
in the necessities of infancy and the food-quest rather 

' 'On the independent, or interdependent, growth of family and 
tribe in primitive society, see Morgan, Anc. Soc, 227; Starcke, The 
Primitive Family, 276; Helen Bosanquet, The Family, 336; also 
Howard's summary of Hellwald's views in his HisL of Matrimonial 
Institutions, etc., i,, 59; Posada, Theories Modernes sur les Origines 
de la Famille, etc., 91, 99, 119, etc. 

* Professor Sumner held that interests of parents and children are 
antagonistic, just as the dead were and are still antagonistic to the 
living. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 19 

than in the pleasures of marital comradeship. Love 
played little or no part in it.^ Its forms and above 
all its duration are to be ascribed to other contin- 
gencies, notably property, or force on the part of the 
male. \;^efore going farther we should sound a word 
of caution: the ** pairing instinct'* {i.e., an instinct 
for monogamous pairing) is a flimsy and dangerous 
foundation for a serious argument for marriage and 
the family. Pairing instinct there may have been, 
and in the sense indicated, but like most other human 
instincts it was only vague and more or less unformu- 
lated until eked out by a long process of education 
through other social forces and institutions; in other 
words, the pairing instinct would have come to naught 
had it not been aided by organic selection. Hence we 
are no better off than if we merely say man has ac- 
quired the habit of sexual pairing and developed a 
system of permanent marriage based upon the family. 
The almost universal practice of polygamy (including 
prostitution) indicates that man has by no means yet 
attained perfect pairing. Nor would he ever reach it 
save by aid of social heredity. The family, then, is a 
social not a natural institution, for the primary impulses 
of both man and woman are against it, in the sense 
that their satisfactions do not require it, nay, are even 
repugnant to it. On the other hand, it was not a con- 
tract any more than primitive society was contractual 

9 Indeed not infrequently love was regarded with suspicion as an 
element in matrimony. The ancient Finns, e.g., chose Lempo, the 
"Son of Evil" to look after the feelings of the heart, "because they 
regarded love as an insufferable passion, or frenzy, that bordered on 
insanity, and incited in some mysterious manner by an evil enchanter." 
(Crawford's transl. of the Kalevala, Preface, p. xxiii.) 



20 Primitive Family and Education 

in origin. It was simply a more or less unconscious 
attempt to solve that group of life problems connected 
with self-maintenance and the perpetuation of the 
species. ''^ 
f^ Definition of Family.^Some one may be wondering 

why we have so far avoided defining the family. The 
reason is fairly obvious. The family ^ like society ^ is a 
variable relation not a fixed thing, and can only he defined 
in terms of genesis and function, > Its genetic side has 
already been touched upon; the remainder of this 
study is an attempt to set forth certain of its functional 
phases. In passing we might remark that Aristotle*s 
definition is of little assistance. When he tells us that 
''The family is the association established by nature 
for the supply of man*s everyday wants," we might 
justly reply, so is society in general, so is the state, so is 
the industrial organization. And other formal defi- 
nitions are open to similar objections. It is no less 
difficult to say what is the "normal'* or "average" 
family. We are constantly warned against attempting 
to deduce the normal from the abnormal or aberrant. 
But as Lippert justly remarks, men have always held 
their own to be the normal human familial organiza- 
tion." We must be more catholic and sympathetic if 
we would understand social evolution. We must be 
prepared to deal fairly even with "absurdities" and 
"abominations." 

'"Fustel de Coulanges makes religion the constructive principle 
of the ancient family. "La famille antique est une association reli- 
gieuse plus encore qu' une association de nature. " This side of family 
organization we include under the mores, 

^^ Aristotle, Politics^ i,, 2 Qowett); Lippert, Geschichte der Familie 
p. iv. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 21 

Family Precedes Marriage. — Most writers on primi- 
tive society head their discussion of self -perpetuation, 
' ' Marriage and the Family. ' ' This is more euphonious, 
no doubt, but less logical, for in the order of develop- 
ment the family comes first. V Some form of sex- O''^ 
pairing and the maternal relation existed long before 
the marriage institution was consummated. ^ Pairing 
was inevitable from the moment that nature's division 
of labor required the commerce of two sexes for the 
getting of offspring ; and maternity arose when a crude 
budding or fission no longer sufficed for reproduction. 
Hence Sumner could say: "Although we speak of mar- 
riage as an institution, it is only an imperfect one. It 
has no structure. The family is the institution, and 
it was antecedent to marriage. *' ^ ^ Lippert sharply dis- 
tinguishes between sex-pairing, which he traces to an 
"impulse of a most primary instinct very closely re- 
lated to the group of reflex phenomena'* ; and marriage j 
of which he says: "Marriage is a subject not of Natu- 
ral but of Culture History. "^^ We concur, at least in 
the second part of Westermarck's conclusion, that "it 
is for the benefit of the young that male and female 
continue to live together. Marriage is therefore rooted 
in the family, rather than the family in marriage. "^"^ 
His derivation of marriage from the family is roughly 
correct; but the "benefit of the yotmg" was not, nor 
never has been, the sole motive for the continued liv- 
ing together of man and woman. Keller's suggestion 
that "marriage in its origin was a combination for the 
purposes of better prosecuting the struggle for self- 

^"^ Folkways, 348. ^3 KuUurgeschichte, i., 70, 72. 

^4 Hist, oj Human Marriage, 22. 



22 Primitive Family and Education 

maintenance'* ^5 is more general, and better in that it 
includes the economic and social elements together with 
the procreative. Man in all his institutions contrives 
to include an element of present satisfaction as well as 
the deferred or projective well-being. The procreation 
and nurture of children is too largely a projective satis- 
faction to offer an unique motive for enduring mar- 
riage. In fact it is probably not too much to say that 
the stability of the family, hence of marriage, came as 
much through the attempt to care for ancestors as 
through common care for common offspring, and that 
the parent's desire for attention when he should join 
his ancestors stimulated him to beget offspring and 
bring them up in the way they should go. But once 
established, the form of marriage became the index 
of family organization. We shall therefore proceed to a 
sketch of the development of marriage as a guide to the 
proper reconstruction of the primitive family, accepting 
)( Westermarck's definition of marriage in its lowest terms 
as "nothing else than a more or less durable connection 
between male and female, lasting beyond the mere act 
of propagation till after the birth of the offspring. '^(^ 

^^ Homeric Society, 201; cf. Lippert, ii., 2^, 81; Ling Roth {Natives 
of Sarawak, etc., i., 127) says marriage among the Dyaks "is a business 
of partnership for the purpose of having children, dividing labor, 
and by means of their offspring providing for their old age. It is, 
therefore, entered into and dissolved almost at pleasure." Marriage 
among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers was an eminently practical, eco- 
nomic arrangement. The young man chose his bride not from some 
high eugenic ideal of offspring, but to enchance his own wealth, and 
good name. "Dinge die er am meisten schatzt, sind Reichtum und 
vornehmes Geschlecht" (Roeder, Die Familie hei den Angelsachsen, 16.) 

^^ L. c. 19; cf. Parsons, The Family, 115. Lujo Brentano follows 
Westermarck in the main; he defines marriage as "eine Verbindung 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 23 

Sub-human Promiscuity. — In the first place, was the 
original sex relation promiscuous, communistic, un- 
regulated? In other words, was there ever a time when 
marriage in some form or other did not exist? We are 
now in a storm center and must proceed judiciously. 
It will be impossible to give here an adequate resume of 
the half-century of polemic which has raged over this 
particular question. The opponents of the promis- 
cuity theory carry their arguments back to the sub- 
human animals. With what result? The barnyard, 
pigsty, or pasture fails to yield any evidence of strict 
pairing; the facts point in the other direction. Some 
few wild birds are cited as beautiful examples of pure 
monogamy and family affection, but they are for the 
most part fanciful and inconclusive ; and it is notorious 
that some of these same birds will desert their spouses 
and their nestlings at the call of the southward-flying 
group. The higher monkeys are held up to our admira- 
tion as models of marital constancy; yet I fail to find 
that any observer has been able to watch any group of 
monkeys in their wild state long enough to determine 
authoritatively their domestic arrangements. It is 
obviously unfair and misleading to judge the free by the 
captive animal in so delicate a matter. We should in 
justice, however, cite Howard's conservative conclusion, 
based upon studies of Brehm, du Chaillu, Westermarck, 
and others, that "promiscuity is far from universal 

zwischen einem Manne und einem Weibe, die mehr oder minder lang, 
aber jedenfalls uber den Zeugungakt hinaus bis nach Geburt des 
Erzeugten dauert." In supporting the monogamic character of the 
primitive family he rejects promiscuity and group-marriage. ("Die 
Volkswirtschaft u. ihre konkreten Grundbedingungen " in Ztscft. f. 
Social u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Bd. i., pp. 77-148). 



24 Primitive Family and Education 

in the pre-human stage. '^'^ Of actual prehistoric man 
we can only conjecture. Myth and legend give us 
little help. Bachofen attempted to interpret them, 
but, as his critics justly remark, succeeded in making 
poetry rather than science. We are left only the 
"survivals" of primitive mankind on which to base 
a judgment as to the beginnings of human marriage; 
and even here the most divergent conclusions have been 
worked out, and espoused with unseemly acrimony. 

Human Promiscuity. — Bachofen in 1861 promul- 
gated his theory of original hetairism.'^ It was taken 
up by McLennan, who held to a theory of original 
sex promiscuity of which polyandry was the first gen- 
eral modification of promise.^' Paul Gide, the emin- 
ent French legal scholar, followed Bachofen in the 
main; he says: 

"Ainsi, tous nos documents sent d'accord, et voici en 
r^sum6 ce qu'ils nous declarant: c' est, qu'il y a eu, du moins 
pour une partie considerable de I'humanite, une premiere 
periode de desordre, et pour ainsi dire, de chaos moral, oil 
les saintes lois de la famille ^taient inconnues et ou la 
femme, libre de tout lien, se trouvait livr^e en meme temps 
a la plus complete independence et k la plus honteuse 
abjection."" 

Morgan required an assumption of primitive promis- 

^'' H. of M. I., i., 97. Lubbock, Marriage, Totemism, and Religion, 
17, denies permanent unions among the social monkeys. 

^^Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861. 

^9 Studies in Ancient History (1886), pp. 89-107; S. in A. H., 2d 
series (1896), pp. 50-5. 

*" Etude sur la condition de la femme dans le droit ancien et moderne, 
etc., 2e ed. (Paris, 1885), p. 20. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 25 

cuity to round out his theory of the consanguine family ; 
consequently he heads his list " Sequence of Institutions 
Connected with the Family,** with "Promiscuous 
Intercourse. " Yet he held only a modified view of this 
promiscuity. He says, for instance : 

"... the state of society indicated by the consanguine 
family points with logical directness to an anterior condition 
of promiscuous intercourse. There seems to be no escape 
from this conclusion, although questioned by so eminent 
a writer as Mr. Darwin. It is not probable that promis- 
cuity in the primitive period was long continued even in 
the horde; because the latter would break up into smaller 
groups for subsistence, and fall into consanguine families." 
He later confesses: "Promiscuity may be deduced theo- 
retically as a necessary antecedent to the consanguine 
family; but it lies concealed in the misty antiquity of 
mankind beyond the reach of positive knowledge."^' 

Professor Sumner, too, was inclined toward the notion 
of original promiscuity. It must be admitted frankly, 
however, that there is no irrefragable evidence for any 
state of primitive promiscuity; yet sufficient *' indica- 
tions '* exist to cast doubt on the alternative usually 
offered, viz., strict monogamous pairing. For example, 
an Australian husband assumes that his wife has 
been unfaithful to him if she has had opportunity." 
Williams and Calvert say of the Fiji women, "fear 
prevents unfaithfulness more than affection . * * ^ ^ Cran tz 

"Ancient Society, 498-9, 417-8, 502; cf. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenos- 
senschaft der Urzeit, etc., chap, ii.; L. Stein, Die Sociale Frage im 
Lichte der Philosophie, 568, etc. 

" Sumner, Folkways, 421. 

»3 Fiji, 135. The English is the authors'! 



26 Primitive Family and Education 

found that single women among the Greenlanders 
rarely broke their chastity and were seldom pros- 
titutes by profession; " but as for the married 
people, they are so shameless that, if they can, they 
break the matrimonial obligation on both sides with- 
out a blush."'' 4 D'Orbigny noted of the Botocudos: 
"Les Botocudos connaissent et respectent le lien de 
famille; ils ne sont pas aussi scrupuleux sur la fidelite 
conjugale. Rien de plus commun parmi eux que I'adul- 
tere. "''s Landor writes of the Abyssinian s: "Owing 
to the singular state of affairs in Abyssinian marital 
relations — the men and their wives indulging in pro- 
miscuous love — it is sometimes difficult to trace the 
exact parentage of children. . . .No faithfulness 
exists in marital relations. '*^^ The California In- 
dians were notoriously unchaste, especially before 
marriage. Young women were the common possession 
of the tribe. The Karoks had no word for sex virtue. ^^ 
Darwin himself admits "that almost promiscuous or 
very loose intercourse was once extremely common 
throughout the world. "^^ And many other facts will 
appear in subsequent paragraphs to bear up this theory. 
Denials of Promiscuity. — The opponents of the 

»4 David Crantz, The History oj Greenland, etc., i., 191. (Eng. transl. 
2 vols., London, 1767.) 

^5 Voyage dans les deux Amiriques, 157. 

^^ Across Widest Africa, i., iio-ii; cf. for other Africans, Jour, 
of the Anthropol. Institute of Gt. Britain, etc. (hereafter abbreviated as 
/. A. I.), xxxiv., 137; xxxvi., 288. 

=7 Powers, "Tribes of Cal.," Contrih. to N. A. Ethnol, III, 157, 22, 
etc.; cf. Gatschet, Contrih. to N. A. Ethnol., II, xl.; Thomas, Indians 
of N. A. inH. T., 373. 

28 Descent of Man. (Merrill & Baker rev. Am. ed.), 674; cf. Post, 
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, 54-5. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 27 

promiscuity theory were not slow to point out its 
weaknesses. Darwin was inclined to doubt an original 
universal promiscuity, because of male jealousy and the 
observed monogamous habits of anthropoid apes.^^ 
But Sumner declares, ^'Beasts do not manifest an 
emotion of jealousy so uniform or tmiversal as Darwin 
assumes in his argument, nor any sentiment like that 
of a half-civilized man.*'^° And as we have already 
hinted, testimony based on the anthropoid apes is 
dubious. Westermarck rejects utterly the whole 
hypothesis of promiscuity, grounding his argument 
largely upon his theory of the natural repugnance 
of housemates to sexual relations. ^^ Wake used a 
similar argument before him.^^ Peschel cites the mo- 
nogamy of the Veddahs to disprove promiscuity. ^^ 
Deniker believes nearly all the evidence to be against 
primitive hetairism.^^ Starcke holds primitive sex re- 
lations to have been monogamous, and bases mar- 
riage on economic motives instead of the sex impulse. ^^ 
Crawley is very positive in his conclusion: 

"All the facts are distinctly opposed to any probability 
that incest or promiscuity was ever really practiced at all ; " 

^9 Desc. of M. (Standard ed.), ii., 318, etc. 30 Folkways, 358. 

^^ L.c. in various places. Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Preface to 
Ling Roth's Natives of Sarawak, effectively disposes of Westermarck's 
theory and indicates the futility of basing arguments for or against 
promiscuity, etc., on "instinct." A recent example of this error occurs 
in Prof. Ell wood's Sociology and Modern Social Problems, pp. 74-5. 
C. D. Whyte (Man, x., 98-9) offers evidence to disprove this theory 
of "natural repugnance." 

32 The Development of Marriage and Kinship, 55. 

33 The Races of Man, 228-9. ^'* 2"Ae Races of Man, 231. 
35 The Primitive Family, 254-61. 



28 Primitive Family and Education 

and again: "It may be confidently assumed that indi- 
vidual marriage has been, as far as we can trace it back, the 
regular type of union of man and woman. The Promis- 
cuity theory really belongs to the mythological stage of 
human intelligence, and is on a par with many savage 
myths concerning the origin of marriage and the like. 
These are interesting but of no scientific value." ^^ 

Group-Marriage. — The existence of so-called Group- 
Marriage has been treated as evidence of at least a 
modified promiscuity. Howitt found traces of it 
amongst the Australian tribes. ^^ Spencer and Gillen 
go so far as to say of the Urabunnas : ' * There is no such 
thing as one man having the exclusive right to one 
woman. Individual marriage does not exist either in 
name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe. '*^^ Mor- 
gan makes Punaluan or group-marriage the second type 
in his ** Sequence, " and claims to find extensive evi- 
dence of such group communism among the Indian 

3^ The Mystic Rose, 444, 483. These statements are too strong by 
far, for considerable evidence of incest, both present and past, exists. 
The Golds of the Amoor region still occasionally practice incest 
between brother and sister and among other relatives. The Nighubutu 
of northeastern Asia have a tradition that the first living man had 
forty-seven sons and forty-seven daughters who married each other 
(Laufer, in Am. Anthrop., ii., n. s., 318-9, 316.). Certain New Guinea 
tribes have a similar legend; see Guise, in xviii. J. A. I., 205-6. Incest 
causes rather laughter than horror among Yakuts; cases of brothers 
and sisters, and even of mother and son living in incest are known 
(Sieroshevsky-Sumner, The Yakuts, 89, reprinted from xxxi. J. A. I). 
Nearly every worker for the protection of children has encountered 
cases of incest in our own society. See, e.g., Rep. of Chicago Vice 
Commission, pp. 174-5. 

37 Native Tribes of S. E. Australia, 281; cf. R. Semon, In the Austral. 
Bush, 232-3; Howitt, xxxvii. J. A. I., 268 Jf. 

38 Native Tribes of South Australia, 63. 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 29 

tribes of North America.^' Post distinguishes be- 
tween group-marriage or "exogamous promiscuity'* and 
endogamous or general promiscuity; he finds evidence 
of the former {e. g., among ancient Britons), but con- 
siders the latter purely hypothetical. ^'^ Kohler makes 
totemism lead directly to group-marriage and derives 
individual marriage from group-marriage. 4' Rivers 
maintains the existence of "collective marriage" but 
rejects primitive promiscuity.'*'' Wake is inclined to 
accept provisionally Fison and Howitt's observations of 
group-marriage among the Kamilaroi and Kumai. 
Bachofen (and more recently Max Thai) finds in 
** temple prostitution" and jus primae noctis stu-vivals 
of a transition period from group- to pair-marriage. ^^ 
So much for the pros. Westermarck heads the contras 
by rejecting in toto group-marriage. Thomas con- 
cludes: 

"The survey of Australian customs and terms of rela- 
tionship leads us to the conclusion that the former, so far 
from proving the present or even the former existence of 
group-marriage in that continent, do not even render it 
probable; on the latter no argument of any sort can be 
founded which assumes them to refer to consanguinity, 
kinship or affinity. It is therefore not rash to say that 
the case for group-marriage, so far as Australia is concerned, 
falls to the ground . . . the theory of primitive promis- 

^^ Anc, Soc. 399; cf, his Houses and House Life of the Am. Aborigines ^ 
vi, 200, 275, etc. 

^° " Hausgenossenschaften und Gruppenehe," in Ausland, for 1891, 
842; id., *' Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts," 54-6, 57, note. 

4» "Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe," in Ztscft. f. vergleichende Rechtswiss, 
xii., 250, 326. 

42 In U Annie Sociologique (1906-9), 357. 43 L, c, 98 jf. 



30 Primitive Family and Education 

cuity and group-marriage as stages in the general history 
of mankind remain mere baseless guesses until we have 
a systematic account both of the causes which led to the 
various steps, and of the processes by which the various 
stages were reached."'*'* 

But the majority of opponents to the theory content 
themselves with limiting its operation. Kalischer con- 
fines group promiscuity to times when sex intercourse 
was seasonal (rutting periods). ^s Crawley rejects uni- 
versal group-marriage and limits it to periods of sex 
license J and insists that it was never more widespread. 
He says: 

"It is a perversion of history, and of psychology as well, 
to make man more communistic the more primitive he is. 
There may be a few isolated cases in peoples whose tribal 

44 N. W. Thomas, Kinship Organizations and Group^Marriage in 
Australia J 147-9; ^/' Curr, The Australian Race, i., 119 ff. 

4 5 "Die Geschlechtliche Zuchtwahl bei den Menschen in der Urzeit," 
in ZtscfL f. Ethnologie, viii., 140-75. A good example of this periodic 
sex license occurs in the ingoma of the Mabasa tribe, "an all-night orgy, 
to which all young people of other clans are invited" (Purvis, Uganda to 
Mt. Elgon, 338). Among the Tangkhuls of Manipur also occur periodic 
festivals marked by sex license; they are usually connected with the 
crops; "the severity of their ordinary morality is broken by a night of 
unbridled license" (Hodson, in xxxi. J. A. I., 307). Of the natives of 
Kiwai Island, British New Guinea, Rev. Jas. Chalmers writes: "The 
Moguru time (the initiation ceremony) is a period of general license, 
and in some respects very much resembles that at Maipua and the 
neighboring district" (xxxiii. /. A. /., 124). A survival of what appears 
to have been periodic license occurs among the Bororos of Brazil, 
where at a certain time of the year the young men give a feast at their 
Bahito and steal away the virgins and keep them in the Bahito. The 
Bororos claim that this only happens to girls without parents, other- 
wise fathers would be angry. But no doubt the practice was once more 
extensive. (See Fric and Radin, in xxxvi. J A /., 390.) 



Promiscuity and Group-Marriage 31 

solidarity has become pronounced. . . . Nor did any man 
ever yet marry a tribe. "'*^ 

Andrew Lang is of similar opinion: "It is an isolated 
'sport' among the Dieri, Urabunna, and their con- 
geners. Being thus isolated, Pirrauru cannot claim to 
be a necessary step in evolution from * group-marriage ' 
to 'individual marriage.'"'' 7 He further attempts to 
show that even in such temporary sex communism as 
the Pirrauru, sex jealousy crops out, at least afterwards. 
On the whole the evidence is inconclusive for the 
former universality of group-marriage. I do not con- 
sider it necessary to assume that the race passed through 
this stage in the evolution of familial forms. Our 
own conclusion is that group-marriage has not yet been 
sufficiently established to build extensively upon. Yet 
even its limited existence, together with those common 
manifestations of periodic sex license, serves to show that 
the primitive marriage bond is by no means so straight 
and enduring as we are urged to believe. This point 
stands out even more clearly in the phenomena of ex- 
change marriage, trial marriage, temporary marriage, 
divorce, etc. Furthermore, the subordination of the 
individual to the group is a salient characteristic not 
only in cases where group-marriage is avowedly the 
custom, but also elsewhere. In fact we might gener- 
alize and extend pretty widely through savage life 
Fison and Howitt's statement regarding the Kamilaroi: 

" . . . it is the group alone that is regarded ; the individual 
is ignored; he is not looked upon as a perfect entity. He 
has no existence save as a part of a group, which in its 

4^ Mystic Rose, 320-1. *^ Secret of the Totem, 43, 49, 55. 



32 Primitive Family and Education 

entirety is the perfect entity." And elsewhere: ''The 
idea of marriage under the classificatory system of kinship 
is founded on the rights neither of the woman nor of the 
man. It is founded on the rights of the tribe, or rather 
of the classes into which the tribe is divided. Class 
marriage is not a contract entered into by two parties It 
is a natural state into which both parties are born. "^* 

This point will be considered more fully in a subse- 
quent paragraph, where the effect of such subordination 
on family life and the rearing of children will be shown. 

48 Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 57. Further evidences of group -marriage 
may be found in Lubbock, Marriage, Totemism, and Religion, 19, etc.; 
also in Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, ii., 348-50; Wundt, Archivf. 
Rechts- und Wirtschafts-philosophie, v., 538-42. 



CHAPTER III 

PRIMITIVE MARITAL RELATIONS 

2. Trial Marriage^ Divorce, Polygamy 

Primitive Sex Relations Not of One Type Only.— What 

with the doubts cast upon original universal promis- 
cuity and upon universal group communism as a second 
stage in the progress toward an enduring monogamic 
marriage bond, are we left no tolerably sure evidence as 
to primitive marriage conditions? It seems likely that 
we may approximate nearer the truth by eliminating 
the qualification " universal'* from the generalizations 
on this subject. The " universal ' ' savors too strongly of 
pure logic, and human institutions are notoriously in- 
different to logic, save that experimental pragmatic 
logic involved in reacting upon life problems. Now 
life problems vary both in space and time ; hence spon- 
taneous variations in these reactions are to be expected ; 
and the only ''universal " is the adapting of some means 
to some end. That is to say, the only thing we can be 
absolutely sure of is that mankind, given time enough, 
will by some hook or crook squirm out of the difficulty. 
But this is far from saying that the same hooks or 
crooks will everywhere be used in the face of similar 

3 33 



34 Primitive Family and Education 

difficulties. Applying this dictum to the evolution of 
marriage, instead of a universal series of forms or stages 
through which mankind has passed, we should find that 
there has been only a general trend, and that the series 
is not at all uniform, but broken into and disturbed at 
many points. Hence we are prepared to find a per- 
fect sequence of forms existing alongside of survivals, an- 
ticipations, and distorted forms. For example, France 
in our own day is presumed to have attained the mono- 
gamous stage, yet fifty thousand of Paris prostitutes 
indicate a survival of promiscuity. And such overlap- 
ping of sex relations may be observed in most modern 
lands. ^ The inference is obvious, viz. , that monogamy is 
not an innate instinct; it is rather, as Morgan once wrote, 
*' a growth through experience, like all the great passions 
and powers of the mind. '''' It is therefore an acquired 
characteristic, and as such only transmissible through 
social heredity J Certain individuals and certain 
groups learn faster or slower than others; that is, they 

' Cf. Parsons, The Family, 115: "There is no known human society 
in which marriage as we have defined it does not exist, but forms of 
sexual promiscuity occur in many societies together with marriage." 
It was only the other day that Mr. George Moore, a notable English 
writer, announced that all women are by nature polyandrous! 

^ Anc, Soc, A^o. 

3 1 am unable to agree with Sutherland {Orig. and Gr. of the Moral 
Inst., i., 185) that there is a " natural tendency" leading savages in gen- 
eral to "drift into the comfort and peace of monogamous union," unless 
he means to include all the forces, natural, social, etc., which have co- 
operated to bring monogamy to pass. Post {Familienrechts, 73-4) 
says, "Meistens ist es nur die Armuth, welche den Mann hindert, sich 
mehr als eine Frau zu halten. " Compare in this connection the theory 
of the old German statistician Suessmilch that the approximate equi- 
librium between the numbers of the sexes proves that monogamy was 
written by Divinity into the order of things. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 35 

acquire this or that characteristic at a varying rate. 
Conditions permitting, we should expect certain 
members of a group to lag behind or advance over others 
in the lesson of domestic stability and happiness. We 
are assured that any sort of sex conduct was allowable 
among primitive men provided it did not infringe on the 
rights of others. Hence we should be prepared to find 
in primitive society a varying condition of promiscuity 
and fixity in the marriage relation, which we might 
briefly term intermittent promiscuity. The majority 
of facts seems to bear out such a view. Adopting Sir 
John Lubbock's excellent distinction, we should say 
that in the earliest times marriage was "brittle**; 
later periods extending to the present day developed 
the "lax " type. Brittle is tantamount to intermittent. 
" Intermittent Promiscuity." — Even Crawley admits 
that the theoretical form of the primitive family in its 
bisexual character involved "separation of man and 
wife except when the needs of love require satisfac- 
tion.** 4 And Wake also yields a point in favor of inter- 
mittency: "That the union between man and woman 
was not that of individual marriage is probable, and 
possibly it may not have endured for life. Much would 
depend on whether it bore fruit.* *s Sterility has al- 
ways been a more or less potent bar to stable marriage. 
On the other hand, there is reason to believe that child- 
bearing has been a hindrance to stable marriage, and 
that women have resorted to infanticide to preserve the 
sexual union. But the separation of man and wife 
must still more effectively have militated against an 

*L. c, 408; cf. Post, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, 87, 
98-9. N s i.e., 52. 



36 Primitive Family and Education 

enduring bond. During this separation propinquity 
to other females could not fail of effect. Lang thinks 
that even granting group communism, 

" the intercourse of the sexes even in that group must have 
been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted exist- 
ence of individual ' likes ' and ' dislikes. ' These restrictions, 
again must have led to some idea that the man usually 
associated with, and responsible for feeding, protecting, 
and correcting the woman and her children, was just the 
man who 'liked' her, the man whom she 'liked,' and the 
man who 'disliked* other men if they wooed her".^ 

Against this we might object that, at least until the 
discovery of fire and other arts, and until man had 
attained a fairly sedentary life, the woman was to a 
large extent self-subsistent ; and at an extremely early 
age her children were, too. Only with a pretty well 
developed division of labor could such a system of 
*' likes" and "dislikes" obtain. Furthermore, we 
must always bear in mind the distinction between 
sex-satisfaction and refined "likes" which would be 
so strongly marked as to sanction strict ties of marriage 
or parenthood. The persistence of prostitution among 
married men and the common phenomenon of the 
omni-amorous man are indications that we must not 
emphasize too strongly likes and dislikes. ^ It is 
unlikely that propinquity failed to operate among 
savages any less than it does nowadays at the hands of 

^ Lang, Secret of the Totem, 6i. 

' I have known several estimable gentlemen who voiced their love 
for all women. One particularly cultured man "liked" any one of 
half a dozen or so women well enough to marry her. I fancy it was 
something more than mere "liking" that decided his final choice! 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 37 

* 'designing parents/* Rather would its operation have 
been the stronger in the absence of those checks which 
society has devised in the progress of acquiring its 
monogamic characteristic. Indeed this was precisely 
the situation among the Waicuri described by Baegert : 

"They do not seem to marry exactly for the same reasons 
that induce civilized people to enter into that state; they 
simply want to have a partner, and the husband besides, 
a servant whom he can command, although his authority 
in that respect is rather limited, for the women are somewhat 
independent, and not much inclined to obey their lords. 
Although they are now duly married according to the rites 
of the Catholic Chiurch, nothing is done on their part to 
solemnize the act, i.e., no feasts, etc. ... As soon as the 
ceremony is over, the new married couple start off in 
different directions in search of food just as if they were 
not more to each other to-day than they were yesterday; 
and in the same manner they act in the future, providing 
separately for their support, sometimes without living 
together for weeks, and without knowing anything of their 
partner's abiding place. . . . They lived in fact, before 
the establishment of the missions in their country, in utter 
licentiousness, and adultery was daily committed by every 
one without shame and without any fear, the feeling of 
jealousy being unknown to them.^ 

Trial Marriage.— -^Trial marriages are only one step /iT 
removed from bare promiscuity. And primitive di- 
vorce is so simple and informal as to amount to the 
same thing. Peary says of his Eskimo friends that 
trial marriage ''is an ineradicable custom. ... If a 

^Baegert, /. c, 367-8; lack of jealousy contradicted in another 
place. 



38 Primitive Family and Education 

young man and woman are not suited with each other 
they try again, and sometimes several times; but when 
they find mates to whom they are adapted the arrange- 
ment is generally permanent. '* ^ Rasmussen ob- 
served among the Greenlanders the custom of ex- 
changing wives, and also notes that the practice is not 
always agreeable to the women concerned. ^° Of the 
Nicobar Islanders, Man writes : 

"The weakness or * brittleness ' of the marriage tie and 
the facility of divorce have been described as a ' feature 
common to the delineations of most of the tribes of Indo- 
China and the Indian Archipelago,' and as presenting a 
striking contrast to the respect for the marriage bond 
shown by natives of India. Among the Nicobarese, as 
among the Dyaks of Borneo, many husbands have changed 
their wives three or more times before they find a partner 
with whom they are willing to pass the remainder of their 
days." 

Among Bontoc Igorots: *' There are no women in 
Bontoc pueblo who have not entered into the trial 
union, though all have not succeeded in reaching the 
ceremony of permanent marriage." Indeed with this 
tribe the olag.ov girls' dormitory institution, deliberately 
fosters the practice of trial marriage by inviting and 
even coercing young men to visit its inhabitants. With 
the exception of the rich, marriage never takes place 

9 The North Pole, 59. 

'" People of the Polar North, 132; cf. the Wagogo of Germ. E. Africa, 
xxxii. J. A. I., 312; also West Australians, Clement, in Int. Archivf. 
Ethnogr., xvi., 13. 

"E. H. Man, "The Nicobar Islanders," xviii. J. A. /., 367-8; c/. 
Post, Familienrechts, 73-4. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 39 

prior to sexual intimacy, and rarely prior to pregnancy. 
The marriage bond is easily broken; if either party 
desires the break, the other rarely objects." This 
opens up the subject of divorce. 

Divorce. — If we are looking for some standard by 
which to measure the enormous progress humanity has 
made with regard to stable marriage and family life, I 
doubt if we can find anything better than a comparison 
between primitive and advanced peoples in the matter 
of divorce.. For, barring certain exceptions, divorce is ■"* 
extraordinarily prevalent among savage peoples. And 
it is usually informal and easy to consummate. 

Among Point Barrow Eskimos marriage is easily 
dissolved for incompatibility or even on account of tempor- 
ary disagreements. '^ With the Central Eskimo the 
slightest pretext suffices for separation. ^^ Among the 
Melanesians Codrington found divorce easy and common.^* 
Captain Burrows observes of the pigmies: "There 
is no divorce among the Mang-bettou. A man simply 
takes another wife when he is tired of the first. "^*^ 
The Doko people, southwest of Abyssinia, are said to 
"live mixed together; men and women unite and separate 
as they please." ^^ Of the Zaparos of Ecuador we are 
told: 

"A. E. Jenks, "The Bontoc Igorot," JJ. S. Depi. Inter. Ethnol. 
Survey Publ., i., 69, 66, 33; similar custom in island of Guam: cf. Safford, 
Am. Anthrop., iv., n. s., 715. 

*3 Murdoch, in gth Bur. Ethn., 411-12. 

^^ Boas, in 6th Bur. Ethn., 579. 

*s Melanesians, 244-6; similarly in parts of New Guinea, see Guise, 
in xviii J. A. I., 209-10; cf. Capt. Cook, Voyage to Pacific Ocean, ii., 
156; alsoz'rf., First Voyage, 88; Rivet, m U Anthropologic, xviii., 608. 

^^Land of the Pigmies., 86. 

*' Latham, Man and his Migrations, 64. 



40 Primitive Family and Education 

" In their matrimonial relations they are very loose — 
monogamy, communism, and promiscuity all apparently 
existing among them. They allow the women great liberty 
and frequently change their mates or simply discard them, 
when they are perhaps taken up by another.*''^ 

Reclus says of the Badagas of India: 

" For any sort of cause the husband enjoys the prerogative 
of sending away even a fruitful partner who has ceased to 
please him, and is free to marry again as often as he likes. 
He rarely uses this right, and if the first alliance has resulted 
in offspring, he will consider himself satisfied. On the 
whole, household bonds do not seriously hamper the move- 
ments of either man or woman. If the bride dislikes her 
home she can leave it, provided she deserts her children. 
The husband will restore whatever little things she may 
have brought ; she quietly returns to her father and awaits 
the proposals of fresh admirers." ^^ 

One of the earlier Victorian writers on India recorded that 
among the Booteahs, 

* * the marriage tie is so loose that chastity is quite unknown 
among them. . . Polyandry prevails among them . . . 
but even the very slight restriction implied by that institu- 
tion is not observed. The intercourse between the sexes 
is, in fact, promiscuous. "^° 

Loskiel found the marriage tie scarcely less brittle among 
several tribes of North American Indians: 

^^ Gomme, Folklore as an Hist. Set., 247. 

^9 Primitive Folk, 195. 

" Rowney, The Wild Tribes of India, 142 (Wake). Further 
examples of easy divorce in Eastern lands: Cummins, xxxiv. J. A. I., 151; 
Johnstone, xxxii. J. A. I., 267; Rivers, xxx. J. A. I. ,81; Ling Roth, Nat. 
of Sarawak, etc., i., 126-33; Volz, Archiv f. Anthropologie, xxxv., 104; 
Shakespear, Man, May, 1912, p. 69. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 41 

The young people among the Delawares, Iroquois, and 
other nations connected with them, have seldom marriages 
of long continuance, especially if they have not children 
soon. Sometimes an Indian forsakes his wife because 
she has a child to suckle, and marries another, whom he 
forsakes in her turn for the same reason. The women also 
forsake the men after having received many presents, and 
knowing that they have no more to expect. Then they 
marry another from whom they expect more. . . . The 
Indians therefore consider their wives as strangers. It 
is a common saying among them, * My wife is not my 
friend,* that is, she is not related to me and I need not 
care for her." Yet he goes on to say that many Indians 
"live very sociably in the married state and keep to one 
wife. These regular families have the most children. 
Some indeed live peaceably with their wives merely that 
they may not be separated from their children." But 
he finally concludes: "There is no very strong tie between 
the married people in general, not even between the oldest. 
A very little trifle, or one bad word, furnishes ground for 
divorce." ^^ 

The lack of marital confidence and understanding 
illustrated by the Indian proverb just quoted is fre- 
quently encountered in every quarter of the world. 
Among the Fuegians, for instance, "the family feeling 
is very weak, also between married people. "^^ "The 
joint houses of the Pelew and Caroline Islands are un- 

" L. c, 57-8; Lawson, History of Carolina, Lond., 17 14 (reprint 
of i860), p. 304; Bancroft, Hist, of U. S. (Centenary ed.) ii., 419; Nelson, 
Indians of New Jersey, p. 40, cites further references; Hennepin, 
Description de la Louisiane, Les Mceurs des Sauvages, 30-5; Gibbs, 
Contrib. to N.A.EthnoL, 1, 198-9. 

"Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii., 677; cf. Bulletins de la Soc. 
d'Anthropol. de Paris, vii., 172; x., 338. 



42 Primitive Family and Education 

favorable to family life. It is regarded as shameful 
that a woman should be in confidential relations with 
her husband. "^^ 

Loose Sex Relations in Modem Mexico. — Accounts 
of domestic relations in present-day Mexico accord 
thoroughly with facts recorded in the preceding para- 
graph. Mr. Flandrau, a keen and thoroughly posted 
student of Mexican life despite his irrepressible whimsi- 
cality, presents a picture which seems to me to typify 
general primitive conditions, and to show conclusively 
the weakness of considering enduring monogamy as an 
innate characteristic. The overwhelming influence of 
the mores is also notable. 

"Among the lower classes in Mexico 'free love* is not 
the sociological experiment it sometimes tries to be in more 
civilized communities. It is a convention, an institution, 
and, in the existing condition of affairs, a necessity. Let 
me explain. The Mexicans are an excessively passionate 
people and their passions develop at an early age (I employ 
the words in a specific sense), not only because nature has 
so ordered it, but because, owing to the way in which they 
live — whole families, not to mention animals, in a small 
one-roomed house — the elemental facts of life are known 
to them from the time they can see with their eyes and 
hear with their ears. For a Mexican child of seven or eight 
among the lower classes, there are no mysteries. Boys 
of fifteen have had their affairs with older women; boys 
of seventeen are usually strongly attracted by some one 
person whom they would like to marry. . . . On my ranch, 
for instance, very few of the 'married' people are married. 
Almost every grown man lives with a woman who makes 

^jRatzel, ii., 187; cf. Fynn, The American Indian^ 124. Further 
evidence will appear in Chapter IV. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 43 

his tortillas and bears him children, and about some of 
these households there is an air of permanence and content. 
But with the death of mutual desire there is nothing that 
tends to turn the scale in favor of permanence; no sense 
of obligation, no respect for a vague authority higher and 
better than oneself, no adverse public opinion. Half an 
hour of ennui, or some one seen for a moment from a new 
point of view — and all is over. The man goes his way, 
the woman hers. The children, retaining their father's 
name, remain as a rule, with the mother. And soon there 
is a new set of combinations. One woman who worked 
here had three small children — every one with a different 
surname: the name of its father. While here she kept 
house with the mayor-domo, who for no reason in particvdar 
had wearied of the wife he had married in church. No one 
thought it odd that she should have three children by 
different men, or that she should live with the mayor-domo, 
or that the mayor-domo should tire of his wife and live with 
her. As a matter of fact there was nothing odd about 
it. No one was doing wrong, no one was 'flying in the 
face of public opinion. ' She and the three men who had 
successively deserted her, the mayor-domo who found it 
convenient to form an alliance with her, and his wife who 
betook herself to a neighboring ranch and annexed a boy of 
sixteen, were all simply living their lives in accordance 
with the promptings they had never been taught to resist. 
It is not unusual to hear a mother, in a moment of irritation, 
exclaim as she gives her child a slap, *Hijo de quien sabe 
quien!* (Child of who knows whom!) "^'* 

^4 Viva Mexico! 90-1, 92, 93. Mr. Flandrau is inclined to lay this 
loose condition of sex mores at the door of the Catholic Church. The 
people, from having been so long under the undivided domination of 
the Church, have come to regard religious marriage as alone valid, 
though since the disestabHshment of the Church in 1859 only the civil 
ceremony is legal. The high fees exacted by the Church effectively 



44 Primitive Family and Education 

Absence of Domestic Happiness. — It is fairly well 
established, then, that promiscuity mixed with apathetic 
monogamous pairing was the original sex relation^ and 
that such a condition still prevails to a no small degree. "" s 
It also appears that the mere having of offspring 
was never the sole marital link. The looseness of 
primitive marriage was probably due to the exigencies 
of the struggle for subsistence, self -maintenance being 
more fundamental than the impulse to project or per- 
petuate oneself . "^ ^ There is little evidence of anything 
approaching a sense of vital relationship between mar- 
riage mates, nor of what we should call a sympathetic 
bond. The relation of man and wife too often corre- 
sponds to that marked in Indo-European language as 
** master" and "bearer of children. "''^ Jt is true that 
occasionally one comes across a picture of domestic hap- 
piness in classical antiquity ^^; but certainly the empha- 
sis is laid upon marriage as a business arrangement. No 
more does happiness appear as an ideal in the familial 

prevent the religious ceremony, with the result that the marriageable 
couple usually dispenses with all formalities. But even in cases where 
a church ceremony has been performed, the tie is scarcely better than 
a rope of sand. 

2 5 This is also substantially Spencer's view {Prin. of SocioL, i., 619, 
644, 647, etc.). It is of course in contradiction to Starcke's conclusion 
as to primitive enduring monogamy (c/. his Prim. Fam., 258; yet in 
a later work, La famille dans les differentes Societes, Starcke somewhat 
contradicts this view and derives monogamy from juristic and economic 
necessities and especially from the demand of one wife to be "first" 
in her husband's household and to relegate his other "wives" to inferior 
rank as concubines). I am indebted for the excellent adjective "apa- 
thetic" to Mr. McGee's article, " Beginning of Marriage," in Am. 
AnthropoL, Ix., 382. 

26 Cf. ante, pp. 18-9. ^^ Schrader, Prehis. Antig_.i 385-7. 

"' E.g., Odyssey, vi., 182; Iliad, bk. vi. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 45 

life of modem savagery. Among the Polynesians, for 
example, the men are said to be very sociable with each 
other, ''but there is nothing which could be called 
domestic happiness. " And Curr says of the Australian 
wife, "She is not the relative, but the property, of her 
husband. ""^ 9 It is not surprising, indeed, that the 
relation between a man and his '^erstes Hausthier^^ (as 
Wuttke calls the primitive wife) should be lacking in 
lively affection or joy. 

Absence of Moral Element in Marriage. — Only with 
the rise of moral sentiment and intelligence does mar- 
riage begin to emerge from a pure physiological and 
economic order. Permanent marriage, we repeat, grew, 
at least in part, out of economic necessity, from eco- 
nomic egoism, from the male's desire to possess the labor 
power of the female. It was therefore at first a more or 
less forced relation between unequals. Out of this en- 
forced association seem to have developed the higher 
marital ties — family sense, love of home, etc. And 
these added values in time supersede the others, and 
even sustain the marriage relation when the old eco- 
nomic necessity has weakened or disappeared. Here, as 
in other social relations, progress is a barbed hook, 
which once swallowed cannot be disengaged. Man- 
kind like the mouse enters by a little hole but grows and 
cannot get out again. Conscience is the protest against 
trying to get out by the little hole, to reject the hook. 
It is organized resistance to the diminution of acquired 
power and well-being. Now this organized resistance 

^'Ratzel, ii., 183 (for. somewhat contrary view, see R. Semon, In 
the Austral. Bush, 331); Curr, Australian Race, i., 106; Thomas, Indians 
oj North America^ 373; Burton, Lake Regions oj Central Africay 493-4. 



46 Primitive Family and Education 

to the relinquishing of an advantage once won, call it 
conscience, or what you will, lies mainly in the group 
conscience; or, perhaps better, in that reservoir of group 
experience denoted by the term '* social heredity.** 
Hence tradition, custom, the mores, play a most im- 
portant role, not only in determining the stability of 
the marriage bond, but also in investing it with those 
ideal and transcendent characteristics which more and 
more come to mark and glorify it. 

The evolution of chastity offers an excellent example 
of how the mores operate to change the content of 
meaning in marriage. Premarital chastity is practi- 
cally unknown, nor even conceived, among lower 
peoples. There is almost universal promiscuity among 
savage youth both before and after initiation. This 
continues up to the time of parental maturity, after 
which pairing of various degrees and types of fixity is 
usual, as we have already seen. Even then marriage 
is anything but strictly chaste. 

The adult savage often makes use of the girls of his 
tribe to gratify his sex desire while they are still at a very 
tender age. Several writers acquainted with the Austra- 
lians say that girls of only nine or ten years old were 
thus taken for promiscuous intercourse.^" Lawson says 
that the Indians of the Carolinas were given to this sort of 
promiscuity ; that young girls who changed mates often were 
sought after as "capable of managing domestic affairs," 
etc.; "the more whorrish, the more honorable," he adds.^^ 
Among the Nandi of the Uganda Protectorate, the "im- 

5" Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, I., 319; Sutherland, /. c, i., 113; 
Torday and Joyce., xxxvi. J. A. I., 288. 
3* Hist, of Carolina, 62-3. 



Trial Marriage and Divorce 47 

mature girls live with the young fighting men until they 
reach womanhood. If by chance one of these unmarried 
girls has a child by a warrior during this intercourse, she 
strangles it as soon as it is bom."^^ Among the Maraba 
people illegitimate sex-commerce involves no shame to the 
girl, but only lowers her "marketable value"; so that she 
fetches only two to four head of cattle instead of four to 
ten. 3 3 On the other hand if an Akamba girl is pregnant 
by another lover at the time of her marriage, so much the 
better thinks her new husband, for he is sure of at least 
one child. 34 

Of marital adultery it is impossible to tmiversalize, 
except to say that it is very widespread, and that prob- 
ably the more subordinate the position of the wife, the 
more she becomes the "thing" of the man, the stricter 
is the feeling against adultery. In such cases it is not, 
however, a question of sentiment, but of masculine 
pique and violation of property rights. The custom of 
offering the wife to one's friend or guest (as observed, 
e.g.y among the North American Indians, the Fijians, 
ancient Arabs, Nandis, Guanaches) depends similarly 

3^ Sir Harry Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii., 878, 553, 642, 
778, 882-5; Granville and Roth, xxviii. /. A. I., 107; Burrows, xxviii. 
J. A. /., 46. 

33 Purvis, Uganda to Mt. Elgon, 281, 74; Crooke, xxviii. J. A. I. 237. 

34 Tate, xxxiv. /. A. I., 137; Bagge, xxxiv. /. A. /., 169; Bennett, 
xix. J. A. I., 70; Thomson, xxxi. J. A. /., 145; C. N. Bell, Tangawara 
(The Mosquito Indians of South Amer.), reviewed in xxix. /. A. I., 
339; A. D. Smith, Through Unknown African Countries, 276; Ellis, 
Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, 154, 185; Man, xii. J. A. I., 135; Lewin, 
Wild Races of S. E. India, 121, 193, 201, 233, 245, 254; Ling Roth, 
Nat. of Sarawak, i., 116; Fumess, The Island of Stone Money; Pector, 
Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr., v., 219; Chevrier, L' Anthropologic, xvii., 370; 
Leprince, U Anthropologic, xvi., 59-60; Rivet, V Anthropologic, xviii., 
605-6; Gibbs, /. c, 199-200; Powers, /. c, 157, 22. 



48 Primitive Family and Education 

upon the notion of husband's right to use his property as 
he chooses. 3 5 It is evident from such customs that 
chastity was not observed, to say nothing of being held 
as a desirable ideal of morality and beauty. In fact as 
already suggested, marital infidelity is often taken for 
granted. Tylor tells of a savage who explained that if 
anybody took away his wife, that would be bad, but if 
he himself took some one*s else, that would be good!^^ 
Mythology and folklore yield abundant evidence of 
this attitude; to such an extent, indeed, that in read- 
ing these old tales one must rub his eyes sometimes to 
dispel the illusion that he is in the midst of Jacobean 
or modern French comedy. 

Polygamy. — Perhaps a few words should be given to 
polygamous marriage forms. Space requirements ne- 
cessitate rather a simimary and dogmatic treatment of 
what is really a most important problem. Polyandry 
we are inclined to regard as unfavorable to the child's 
education and training, partly owing to its form, and 
partly to the conditions which produce it. In the first 
case, there must almost of necessity be an air of un- 
certainty about the male. parent; and consequently 
divided authority and friction in the care of offspring. 
In the second case, since it springs from poverty and 
population pressure (at least largely so), it is not likely 
that the child should receive a very full share of care and 

3sSchrader, /. c, 338; Lewis and Clarke, Travels, i., 144; ii., 165; 
Williams, Fiji, 135; Johnston, /. c, ii., 882, etc.; Miss Cook, Amer. 
Anthrop,, ii., n. s., 479-80. 

3« Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii., 318. In many cases where adultery 
is nominally punishable, it is not difficult to secure a proper judgment 
of innocence; see, e.g., Girard on certain Congo tribes, in L* Anthropologic, 
xii., 85. 



Polygamy 49 

training. However, I do not lay this down as law or 
gospel; for it may be that the child's interests would 
be better cared for by a jury of fathers than by a single 
sire. As for polygyny, it is difficult to see why, theoreti- 
cally, it should be inferior to strict monogamy, from the 
viewpoint of the child's advantage. It is an index of 
comparative material well-being; so that the child 
should not fail of proper nourishment. It affords the 
child a larger share of maternal attention than is possi- 
ble under polyandry or a starveling monogamy that 
forces the woman to grub incessantly for her own living, 
and mayhap that of her children as well. The objection 
that under such a system the child loses the paternal 
influence is not insuperable; for if paternity stands for 
strength and discipline, the polygynous father must 
possess these qualities to an imusual degree in order to 
have attained to his material prosperity, and to cope 
with his plurality of female partners. There is no 
good reason why he should not stand for authority and 
discipline to a hundred children as to half a dozen, 
if he sets himself that job ; and he is quite as likely to do 
so as the modem monogamous father, who, involved in 
business and social cares, sees his children only of a 
Sunday. ^7 

Yet there do seem to be certain grave educational 
objections to polygamous marriage. If education be 
conceived as a life process, and if honorable, above- 
board relations between the sexes be a vital part of that 

37 A little girl living in a New York suburb is reported recently to 
have asked, "Mother, who is that strange man? I don't like him, I 
wish he would go away!" — "Why, my child, that is your father!" 
etc. It is doubtful if the hundredth child of a polygamous father 
would be more in the dark I 

4 



so Primitive Family and Education 

education, then anything which hinders the easy 
natural play of such relations limits and obstructs 
education. Consider, for example, the conditions 
surrounding the young men of such a tribe as the Mang- 
bettou. Captain Burrows says that morality is practi- 
cally non-existent among them, "the reason being that 
the chiefs have so many wives (sometimes up to five 
hundred) that there are no women left for the young 
men of the village to marry. "^^ Such a condition 
represents not only a moral but also an educational 
crisis. Again, the ranking of the polygamous household 
is usually hierarchic not democratic; there is usually 
one chief "wife" and a number of subordinates; hence 
internal dissensions and jealousies are sure to arise and 
to react upon the status and well-being of the several 
ranks of children. Presumably for this reason, Mrs. 
Parsons guardedly concludes: "Although polygamy is 
undoubtedly more advantageous to offspring than re- 
stricted, i.e.y very unstable, monogamy, yet it probably 
secures less parental care for offspring than developed 
or enduring monogamy. "^^ The Greenlanders, ac- 
cording to Crantz,4« did not always practice polyg- 
amy from love of children, nor merely to secure a 
"stay*' in their old age, "but mostly from lust" — 
never a healthy condition for rearing man or beast. 
Parenthetically let it be noted that marital happiness 
or content is not in any way identical with the welfare 
of offspring. It is one thing to say, e.g.^ that a 
Mabuche woman likes polygamy and welcomes each 
new wife because it divides her own work, and quite 
another to say that the Mabuche child profits in any 
38 J. A. /., xxviii., 46. 39 The Family, 144. ; 40 ^, c., i., 191. 



Polygamy 51 

way by the arrangement. Among the Mandingo ne- 
groes an old voyager found that polygamy seemed 
largely to have obliterated the paternal influence, but 
to have strengthened the maternal relation. ^^ Here is 
a source of weakness, for however wise the maternal 
teaching, it cannot fail to be unbalanced unless com- 
plemented by masculine influence, either from a parent 
or from social regimenting. I shall not attempt to 
pronounce an ipse dixit on this matter; however, a 
final citation from two noted observers of the Fijians 
should show at least that there is a serious question 
and matter for grave educational doubt. 

"Another and most heavy curse of polygamy falls on the 
children, since it is an institution which virtually dissolves 
the ties of relationship, and makes optional the dis- 
charge of duties which nature, reason, and religion render 
imperative. Hence there are multitudes of children in 
Fiji who are wholly uncared for by their parents; and 
I have noticed cases beyond number where natural affec- 
tion was wanting on both sides. The Fijian child is utterly 
deprived of that wholesome and necessary discipline which 
consists of regular and ever repeated acts of correction and 
teaching. Fitful attempts to gain the mastery are made 
by the parent, coming in the form of a furious outburst 
of passion, to which the child opposes a due proportion of 
obstinacy, and in the end is triumphant. Thus the 
children grow up without knowledge, without good morals 
or habits, without amiability or worth, fitted, by the way 
in which they are reared, to develop the worst features of 
heathen life. And this hapless condition they owe to 
polygamy, which robs the parent of the comforts and 

4' Park, in Pinkerton, Voyages, etc., xvi., 872. 



52 Primitive Family and Education 

endearments of married life, and gives the child but a 
slight advantage over the whelp of the brute. "''^ 

Summary. — The foregoing paragraphs make no pre- 
tense to an exhaustive discussion of primitive marriage 
conditions. It will be impossible to go into details of 
the profound social changes which have brought 
about the sequence of marriage and familial types. 
0"' y Suffice it to say that there has been no universal and 
uniform sequence, that the patriarchal family is not 
the ideal nor primeval type despite the theological 
and legal sanctions for belief in it as such.)/ Perhaps 
the following rough sequence ^ 3 indicates as well as may 
be the historic progress of the family: (i) Father- 
Family with monandry, communism of women, or 
apathetic and intermittent monogamy; (2) Mother- 
Family with the influence of the mother's clan pre- 
dominating; (3) Transition to the Father-Family in 
the form of the Patriarchate with its successive toning- 
downs and modifications. Concurrent with these 
changes in marriage and family forms must be noted the 
growing sense of property and of kinship. In fact, so 
far as we may state social changes in strict "causal" 
terms, we might say that the transition from (i) to (2) 
was caused by a gradual division of occupation and 
development of sense of relationship between mother 
and child as well as close kinship in the clan; the 
transition from (2) to (3) by a further differentiation by 
occupation, a further refining and precision in notions 
of relationship, a loss of the sense of clan solidarity and 

42 Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 141-2. The reader will make such 
allowance as he chooses for European missionary bias in this excerpt. 

43 Adapted from a suggestion of Professor Sumner. 



Summary 53 

its predominance as a social unit, and growth of a sense 
of property, with the desire to amass and transmit it. 
But all that is necessary to our present purpose is to C^ 
have established the original brittle, intermittent, 
shifting bond which preceded the modern relatively 
stricter marriage tie.7\ One question only concerns us : 
What was the effect of this shifting, unstable arrange- 
ment upon the care and nurture of children: in other 
words, upon their education? With education as with 
any other force, continuity in effort is requisite to 
produce adequate results. It is obvious that with a 
continual shifting and disturbing of domestic relations 
there could have been no continuity in any policy of 
parental education had the times permitted or required it. 
Conceive, if you can, a condition in the present whereby 
a child's parents or guardians are constantly shifting; 
where the children become as Jules Simon said, "Or- 
phelins dont les parents sont vivants. " Is it not clears 
then, that such a slack marriage relation, instead of whole- 
somely educating the child, must have left him without edu- 
cation, or what is worse, with an education in rebellion, 
looseness, and egoism? In other words, must have fos. 
tered in him qualities and habits which other social agencies 
were burdened with checking or weeding out? This de- 
duction is based wholly upon a study of the marital 
relation. The subsequent discussion of the relation of 
parents to children will aid in justifying or disproving 
this conclusion. Furthermore, in that large group of 
cases where the marriage relation was stable enough, 
yet based not on understanding or good will but rather 
on male force and female subordination (physical and 
economic), the mere fact of such gross marital in- 



54 Primitive Family and Education 

equality must effectually have checked any serious 
domestic education. The teachings of a slave, chattel, 
or erstes Hausthier could scarcely match those of a lord 
and master. But the very essence of domestic teaching 
is supposed to be its rather egalitarian mixture of 
masculine and feminine. Any domestic system that 
marks off sharply the two must result in sex antago- 
nisms and social discord. This is precisely what we 
shall find cropping out in sex taboos. Finally, there 
is the question whether with more excellent marital 
arrangements the child's education could be con- 
summated within the family circle. To this we can 
only reply that common sense, sociology, and genetic 
psychology unite in insisting that for the development 
of a well-rounded personality the child needs the widest 
possible area of social contact. But does the family 
afford a sufficiently wide pasture ground for the raising 
of such a rounded personality? We are rather of the 
opinion that even the most excellent family relations 
are likely to do actual educational harm if the develop- 
ment of the child's "self" and his education be re- 
stricted too closely within the family. It conduces to 
inbreeding, to what might be called educational incest. 
A narrow family feeling breeds selfishness, and a self- 
ishness peculiarly repellent and difficult to extirpate; 
for as Professor Mackenzie observes, "the evil spirit 
is there masquerading as an angel of light. "^4 
** Introduction to Social Philosophy, p. 364. 



CHAPTER IV 

PRIMITIVE NOTIONS OF KINSHIP AND RELATIONSHIP 

Distinction between Kinship and Relationship. — To 

gain any adequate idea of primitive parental and filial 
relations, one must understand something of primitive 
principles of kinship. These notions are complex and 
by no means always clear. They are inseparable from 
the whole web of savage tribal organization and phi- 
losophy of life. X The exact form of most primitive social rf 
organization, whether an amorphous consanguineous 
horde, a system of gentes and clans, or some more com- 
plex tribal form, is perhaps indeterminable. Speculation 
is rife, but no absolute conclusions have been established. 
This much is pretty certain, however, that neither the 
family as we know it nowadays, nor the individual 
was the unit; but rather the clan, whether based on 
totemism or otherwise ; and that in consequence, the in- 
dividual was subordinate to the clan group./ Further- 
more, the immediate result of such a system — or shall 
we say the cause of it? — was the distinction between 
kinship and relationship. It would hardly be exact 
to say that primitive peoples made a hard and fast 
distinction between the two ; yet in practice there does 
seem to have been some such distinction. Kinship was 

55 



56 Primitive Family and Education 

the more essential fact, and relationship secondary. 
In modern terminology, kinship was conventional, 
relationship natural. Yet we must not make the mis- 
take of supposing that primitive minds thus considered 
the facts; to the contrary, what we should call conven- 
tional was to them not only natural, but even more natu- 
ral than nature itself. This will serve to explain or at 
least illustrate why the group tie so often took prece- 
dence over what seems to us the far more obvious narrow 
tie of blood, why the group bond was closer than that of 
family. The whole matter might perhaps be reduced 
to terms of blood relationship; in that case we should 
have to say that it was rather a general, superficial, more 
extensive blood-sense than our modern, narrower, more 
intensive view ; that it was rather a mystic, speculative 
view than a rigid scientific, physiologic view; and that 
the idea of strict consanguinity developed out of an 
earlier, more general notion of affinity.^ On this 
point Crawley remarks: 

** Primitive relationship, it is clear, is at once stronger 
and weaker than the civilized tie ; weaker, because the bond 
of blood has not assumed a superiority over other relations, 
close contact being the test; stronger, because the ideas 

^ Mr. Thomas in his Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage 
in Australia (p. 4) thus happily phrases this distinction: "Kinship 
is sociological, consanguinity physiological." See also M. Giraud- 
Teulon's Origines du Mariage, etc., 132-4; Post, Die Geschlechts- 
genossenschaft der Urzeit, chap, i.; Ellis, Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, 299; 
Lippert, ii., 333, etc.; Sumner, 7^0/^^03^5,494-5; Wake, /. c. 254,267, 
363, 387. Crawley considers that relation and relationship are not 
differentiated in primitive thought (M. R., 468). For familial blood- 
revenge as an index of primitive family feeling, see Steinmetz, Ethn, 
Studien, etc., i., :i6S ff. 



Kinship and Relationship 57 

of contact which characterize these relations have so in- 
tense a religious meaning and enforce duty so stringently. "* 

Subordination of Family to Group Ties.-^Primitive /T^ 
kinship rested, so it appears, on common work, common 
ownership, common eating ^' also, no doubt, on com- 
mon connection with some eponymous ancestor, though 
it is not clear whether such a common tracing of de- 
scent grew out of the common activities, or vice versa. X 
I am inclined to the former view as the more natural. 
For the connection between food and kinship and 
between common use of fire and kinship is very clear in 
primitive thought, and naturally so ; the inference being 
that food produces flesh, and identity of food produces 
identity of flesh. ^ However that may be, there is 
abundant evidence to show the sense of group solidarity, 
as distinguished from a lax familial sense. Totemism, 
with its corollary marriage regulations, is a case in 
point. But even where the family, as in ancient 
Arabia, was fairly well established, the parental relation 

* Crawley, /. c. 460; also, Gomme, /. c. 231, 268; McLennan, 
Studies in Anc. Hist. 121. 

3 Major Powell wrote ( Bur. EthnoL, xx., p. ex): "Tribal life is . 
chiefly public life. There is little domestic seclusion; often the house 
is a communal house for the entire clan or gens. Nearly all hunting 
is public hunting; nearly all fishing is public fishing; nearly all gather- 
ing of seeds is public gathering of seeds ; nearly all gathering of roots 
is public gathering of roots; all agriculture is public agriculture, 
and all herds are public herds." And he might have added, nearly 
all sex relations were in common at the beginning, as we have already 
seen. 

< Crawley, /. c. 456; cf. Lippert, ii., 336-7; Starcke, La famille 
dans les differentes societes, 202. For relation of fire to kinship, see 
Lippert, Kgschte., i., 265; Weeks, xxxix. J. A. I,, 416 Jf., Fritsch, Die 
Eingeborenen, etc., 232. 



58 Primitive Family and Education 

was defined not in physiological but in social terms. ^ 
Marital relationship, it may be affirmed in general of 
lower peoples, was subsidiary to group kinship. 

Suggestions of this appeared in the preceding chapter. 
Studies of the American Indian bring it out still more 
clearly. Fynn, speaking particularly of the Pueblos, says: 

" There was nowhere such a family bond as we find in 
civilization. Marriage among members of the same gens 
was prohibited; therefore, since the ties of clanship were 
very strong and the links of matrimony very weak, there 
was no harmonious, firmly united family, but rather a 
loosely constructed household. Since the children be- 
longed to the mother, and the mother was a member of 
a gens different from that of the father, there was always 
a wide gulf separating the individuals of the domicile. 
The husband was isolated, perhaps simply tolerated. 
Plans and secrets existed among the members of the gens 
rather than between husband and wife.**^ 

Bandelier corroborates this statement: 

** Since it was the custom for women to raise the walls 
of buildings, and to finish their house inside and outside, 
they owned it also. The man was only tolerated. His 
home was properly with his clan, whither he must return 
in case his spouse departed this life before him." And 
again: "The affairs of the father's clan did not concern 
his wife or his children, whereas a neighbor might be his 
confidant on such matters. The mother, son, and daughter 
spoke among themselves of matters of which the father 
was not entitled to know, and about which he scarcely 
ever felt enough curiosity to inquire." 

s William Roberston Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 
119. 
^ The American Indian, 124; cf. Lummis, Land oj Poco Tiempo, 43. 



Kinship and Relationship 59 

Frazer finds this subordination of the family tie to the 
group or clan bond in general wherever the totemic clan 
prevails; 

"in totem tribes every local group being necessarily 
composed (owing to exogamy) of members of at least two 
totem clans, is liable to be dissolved at any moment into 
its totem elements by the outbreak of a blood feud, in 
which the husband and wife must always (if the feud is 
between their clans) be arrayed on opposite sides, and in 
which the children will be arrayed against either their 
father or their mother, according as descent is traced 
through the mother, or through the father. . . . Mem- 
bers of the same clan are buried together and apart from 
those of other clans, hence the remains of husband and 
wife, belonging as they do to separate clans, do not rest 
together." ^ 

The Indian proverb cited from Loskiel in a preceding 
paragraph also sustains this notion. Major Gurdin 
observes that among the Jowai ''the man is nobody . . . 
if he be a husband he is looked upon merely as u shong 
kha, a begetter."^ Another writer notes of the Khasi 
Hill people that the husband visits his wife occasionally 
in her own home, where "he seems merely entertained to 
continue the family to which his wife belongs. "' Among 
the Chukchi of northeastern Asia it is said that the family 

' Bandelier, The Delight Makers, 27, 14; Frazer, Totemism and 
Exogamy, i., 53, 75; cf. Morgan, Anc. Soc, 83^.; id., Houses and House 
Life, etc., pp. vi., 200, 275; Post, Familienrechts, 87, 99; Gibbs, in 
Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol, i., 198; McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric 
North America, 425; Gushing, Primitive Motherhood, 24-5; Barbeau, 
Man, June, i 12, p. 85. 

8 The Khasis, 76, 82, cited by Gomme. 

^ Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, xii., 625; see also Graham, Bheel Tribes 
of Kandish, 3, cited by Gomme; Hartland, Rise of Fatherhood, cited 
by Lubbock, Marriage, Totemism and Religion, 22. 



6o Primitive Family and Education 

tie is the strongest social relation "but it is so broad as to 
include the clan. " ^ ** 

Another group of facts indicates the subordination of 
marital relationship to group kinship, viz., the power 
of the maternal uncle ; he often has more authority than 
the father in the care and discipline of the father's 
own children ; he is also often the sole or chief heir where 
the maternal family system prevails." Furthermore, 
though the case is not universal, theories of the soul play 
a part in this subordination. For example, every true 
Kafir has two personalities: his idhlozi or individual, 
personal, inalienable spirit; and his itongo or ancestral 
spirit, which is not personal but tribal, and comes not 
by birth but by initiatory rites. To be without this 
clan or tribal spirit is the greatest calamity a Kafir can 

"Bogoras, in Am. Anthrop., iil., n. s., loi. As an example of the 
feeling of insufficiency with which primitive men regard the family 
might be cited the Indian's aversion for farm life. This does not 
proceed from a disregard for property, nor a distaste for agriculture or 
work in general, but rather from the hatred of isolation and restriction 
to the narrow limits of familial life. Mr. Kallmann says: "The 
isolation of farm life is distasteful to them. They prefer, therefore, 
to lease their lands to white farmers and to enjoy the meager income 
from this source and from certain government annuities in tribal bands 
and villages as heretofore" {Education of the Indian, p. 26). 

" But even where descent is strictly paternal, as in Torres Straits, 
the authority of the maternal uncle is maintained, and his relationship 
is considered nearer than that between father and son. Among the 
Ba-yaka of the Congo, a child belongs to the village of the maternal 
uncle. Among certain Gold Coast natives a father cannot pawn his 
child without the uncle's consent., etc. See J. A. I., xxxvi.,45, 186; xxxi., 
Appendix, 171; Lippert, i., 125. Among the Ba-Kwese of southwestern 
Congo Free State, "inheritance is uncertain, but it appears that a 
man's heir is his brother" (Torday and Joyce, xxxvii. /. A. I., 149). 
For an example of the paternal aunt playing the r61e customarily 
occupied by the maternal uncle, see Rivers, Folklore, xxi., 42-59. 



Kinship and Relationship 6i 

conceive. Such a man, says Kidd, "goes through life 
unprotected"; that is, his ancestral guardian angel is 
lacking.^'' 

Sex Taboos. — Furthermore, sex taboos and their 
concomitant sex solidarity are an important factor in 
that lack of close family life which marks primitive so- 
ciety. The widespread institution of the Men's House 
(also Women's House, Club House, etc.) was probably, 
an outgrowth of sex solidarity, and strongly affected 
not only the marital but also the parental relation. 
Ellis found, for example, that in the Society and 
Sandwich Islands, as soon as a boy was able to eat, his 
food was kept distinct from that of his mother, and 
brothers and sisters might not eat together from the 
earliest age. ^2 

In Fiji, although some degree of domesticity is main- 
tained, yet 

"there is too much reserve to allow the social element 
full influence. A general kindness of manner is prevalent, 
but the high attachments which constitute friendship are 
known to very few. A free flow of affections between 
members of the same family is further prevented by the 
strict observance of national or religious customs imposing 
a most unnatural restraint. Brothers and sisters, first 
cousins, fathers and sons-in-law, mothers and daughters- 
in-law, and brothers and sisters-in-law, are thus severally 
forbidden to speak to each other or to eat from the same 
dish. The latter embargo extends to husbands and wives — 
an arrangement not likely to foster domestic joy. Hus- 
bands are as frequently away from their wives as with 

^^ Savage Childhood, 15. 

^=3 Polynesian Researches, i., 263. ^ 



62 Primitive Family and Education 

them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly 
at home." '4 

Among the Ja-luo of the Uganda Protectorate, "Father 
and son eat together in a little separate hut which has 
open sides. Women eat separately from the men inside 
their own houses. "^^ Among the Kavirondo, "A father 
does not eat with his sons, nor do brothers eat together; 
women invariably partake of their food after the men 
have done."'^ The aborigines of Santa Maria (Colombia) 
did not live together as man and wife in the night be- 
cause of a belief that a child conceived in the night will 
be born blind; nor did they live together at any time, 
but occupied separate huts with a great stone between 
them to which the woman brought her husband's food.'^ 
Crawley cites a long list of ethnologic observations on 
the separation of men and women as in the examples just 
given; they include tribes from every quarter of the 
globe, Kafirs, Zulus, American Indians, New Guineans, 
Marquesans, Coreans, Senegambians, etc., etc.; and many 
others might be added to his list. Indeed his particular 
remark concerning the Pelew Islanders might almost be 
erected into a generalization : " . . . men and women hardly 
live together, and family life is impossible. "^^ 

'4 Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 107; cf. Ratzel (2d Germ, ed.), ii., 
276; cf. the Mosquito Indians, among whom it was "improper" for 
women to display emotion over their husbands, xxix. J. A. /., 339. 

^s Johnston, Uganda, ii., 787. 

^^ Ibid., ii., 735; cf. J. A. I., xxix., 82; xxx., 27-8; Captain Cook, 
Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, ii., 156. 

^^ Nicholas in Am. Anthrop., iii., n. s., 617, translating from an 
eighteenth century Spanish friar. 

^^ Crawley, /. c. 37-50; p. 40 he says, "Family life as we know it 
is utterly unknown in Corea. " See, also, Webster, Primitive Secret 
Societies, i; Jenks, Bontoc Igorot, 58; Werner, British Central Africa, 
148; Bennett, xxix. /. A. I., 70-1 ; Rivet, in L'Anthropologie, xviii., 608. 



Kinship and Relationship 63 

Sex taboos were no doubt based on primitive theories 
of contact, of communication. Hence it is not sur- 
prising that all children during their premier enjance 
are relegated to the mother, while the later care and 
training of male children are assumed by the men. This 
notion perhaps cuts some figure also in such divorce 
customs as that of the Botocudos, where in the event 
of a separation the children stay with their mother 
during their early years, but later rejoin their father.'' 
For in primitive thought the woman is usually re- 
garded literally as a weaker vessel, whose weakness is 
transmissible. Hence in many tribes man and wife 
seldom share the same bed. The reason the Bareas 
give is that "the breath of the wife weakens the 
husband. ''^° Effeminacy is construed into something 
tangible and * 'catching.'* Among the Omahas, if a 
boy played with girls he was dubbed ''hermaphrodite" ; 
and in the Wiraijuri tribe "boys are reproved for play- 
ing with girls — the culprit is taken aside by an old man, 
who solemnly extracts from his legs 'some strands of 
the woman's apron* which have got in. "^' 

Family Bond Weak.— ^It is evident, then, that group 
solidarity, whether based on sex or other circumstances, 
tended to subordinate and weaken the marital relation- 
ship, y This must have had enormous significance in 
every aspect and function of the family. And the 

^9 D'Orbigny, /. c, 157. 

^'''A survival of this idea of communicating weakness appears in 
the objection to children's sleeping with older people; the negative 
hygienic reasons are known only by their apparent effects which are 
lumped together under a positive heading "contamination." 

" Crawley, /. c, 93; for examples from modern Europe, see ihH,, 
203-4. 



nT 



64 Primitive Family and Education 

weakness of the family bond appears even more strik- 
ingly when we come to consider primitive notions of the 
parental relations. Sir John Lubbock summarizes the 
progress of these notions, thus: 

''Children were not in the earliest times regarded as re- 
lated equally to their father and mother . . . the natural 
progress of ideas is, first, that a child is related to his tribe 
generally; secondly, to his mother, and not to his father; 
lastly, and lastly only, that he is related to both."^^ 

This seems a fair resume of the case, though, as in the 
attempt to set down the sequence of familial forms, 
there can be no pretense to a universal rule. The 
familiar statement that in primitive times maternity 
was a matter of fact, paternity one of presimiption, has 
been hotly disputed; largely, I believe, because of the 
supposed implication of promiscuity.^^ But even 
supposing that the promiscuity theory must go by the 
board, that in itself is no sufficient reason for rejecting 
the dictum as to presumptive paternity. For evidence 
abounds on the hazy ideas of primitive men as to the 
nature of reproduction, the connection of sex relations 
with conception ; in fact, to them the whole process of 
self -perpetuation is more or less of a blur. This is not 
strange if we stop to consider the savage's general 
misty notions of nature-processes, and of the limits of 
his own personality. 

Procreation in Primitive M3i;h. — Where do babies 

^^ Origin of Civilization, 3d. ed., 149. Wake in quoting the passage 
criticizes this view as being an incorrect use of "tribe," and offers 
"clan" as the proper term. 

23 For denials of uncertainty of paternity as the reason for fixing 
descent in the maternal line, see Wake, /. c, 343; Crawley, /. c, 461. 



Kinship and Relationship 65 

come from, and how do they get here? are two of the 
child's earliest questions. They must have suggested 
themselves also to primitive men. Mythology and 
folklore, as well as ethnography, contain frequent 
references to the subject. Totemism, classification of 
relationships, systems of descent, and other practices 
are based on attempts to work out the problem by rule 
of thumb. The institution of ** maternal descent" is 
one of the most obvious and natural solutions thus 
attained. The connection of mother and child must 
by the nature of things have been imescapable to beings 
having the slightest powers of observation and ratio- 
cination. Yet its full significance was never fully 
grasped. In fact we are still grappling with the prob- 
lem and are yet far from its final solution. Primitive 
man seized upon the general idea of physical maternity, 
the creating of new life; but he did not confine this 
power to the htmian female, nor the females of his 
animal familiars. In accordance with his animistic 
philosophy he endowed inanimate nature with the 
same faculty, or at least conceived that the human and 
the not-human worked along somewhat parallel lines. 
Hence the Kafir calls little stones the children of big 
ones, and villages the children of towns. 

But this is not all: animals may bear human children, 
and stocks and stones conceive and bring forth, hut 
not necessarily according to their kind. Creation myths 
are full of these ideas. An Iroquois legend, for ex- 
ample, relates that the first of men were formed of the 
flour of maize. The oldest name for the Allegheny 
Mountains is said to be Paemotinck or Pemolnick, 
an Algonkin word probably meaning *'the origin of the 



66 Primitive Family and Education 

Indians." A Wichita tradition holds that their an- 
cestors issued from the rocks about their homes. 

Other tribes have the same idea, e.g., the Tahkalis, 
Navajos, Coyoteras. The Kenai, Kolushes, and Atnai 
claim descent from a raven, really the Creator Raven. 
The Dogribs, Chippeways, and Hare Indians, as well as 
the west coast Eskimos and Aleuts all believe they have 
sprung from a dog. The California Diggers claim the 
humble coyote, the Lenni Lenape the wolf, for ancestor. 
Osage Indian tradition makes a snail the founder of their 
nation. The Mewan Indians of California ascribe their 
origin to feathers of the turkey-buzzard, raven, and crow, 
stuck in the ground by two animal culture heroes. =^4 A 
Greenland creation myth as related to Rasmussen runs 
thus: "When the world was made, people came. They 
say that they came out of the earth. Babies came out of 
the earth, *'^s etc. Certain tribes of New Guinea make 
a dog and a python the original inhabitants of the earth ; 
they met one day, were very lonely, and suggested mar- 
riage; the suggestion was quickly carried out; the python 
produced three human children, two male and one female 
who married one another and produced children, who in 
their turn married one another, and so on.^^ The list 
of such tales might be prolonged. Other myths or legends 
not distinctly of the Creation Cycle contribute similar facts. 
The Papuan folk tale of Dabedabe the Good relates how 
"a certain man had a pig which left him and gave birth to 

"^Brinton, Myths of the New World, 84, 166-7, 181, 223-32; Lewis 
and Clarke, Travels, i., 12; Merriam, The Dawn of the World, 83-7, 
67-8, 115; Matthews, "Myths of Gestation and Parturition," in Am. 
Anthrop., iv., n. s., 731-42; see also Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy , i., 
5-10. 

»s Rasmussen, People of the Polar North, 100. 

'^ Guise, in xxviii. /. A. I., 205-6. 



Kinship and Relationship 67 

her young in the bush. Now five of them were pigs like 
their mother, but the sixth was a man child, and him his 
mother loved best of all." ^^ 

I am quite willing to see in most of these cases evi- 
dences of totemism. But I am not prepared to accept 
Mr. Brinton's generalization to the effect that not a 
*' single example could be found where an Indian tribe 
had a tradition whose real purport was that man came 
by natural process of descent from an ancestor, a brute. " 
It is quite probable, as Mr. Hill Tout suggests, ^^ that 
these animal ancestors are not now considered to have 
been "just common animals and nothing else** but 
are held to have been persons as well; but this appears 
as a rationalization of a still more primitive belief. I 
cannot stop here to discuss the whole question in its 
details; but I believe this inference to be just, viz., 
that primitive myths and legends manifest gross uncer- 
tainty regarding not only the original creation of many but 
also the share of parents in procreation. 

Sex Relations between Men and Animals.-''"^e may QT 
be sure it was not mere courtesy or fantasy which ruled 
that if rocks and trees and animals could bear human 
children, likewise human mothers might bring forth 
animal offspring. It is not surprising, therefore, to 
find an Eskimo legend which relates how originally all 
men were Eskimos; but that one of the girls being un- 
willing to marry, she was forced by her father to wed a 
dog; she gave birth to ten children: two dogs, two 
ergigdlit (dogs with men*s heads), two Eskimos, two 

»' Annie Ker, Papuan Fairy Tales, 13. 
"8 J. A. /., xxxiv., 325-6. 



68 Primitive Family and Education 

gavdlundt (white men), and two qavdlitndtsait (white 
men of warlike disposition) . ^ ^ ^ i^ one of the Japanese 
Shinto myths an ancient culttire pair are represented as 
giving birth first to a child, then to the island of Aha. ^° 
A Naga creation legend nms thus: "The world was 
populated by the offspring of one mother, who emerged 
from the ground and at one time gave birth to a man, 
a bear, a deer, a tiger, an elephant, a rat, and a mouse. 
These multipHed and filled the world. " ^^ Into a simi- 
lar category of facts should be placed those myths of 
marriages or love relations between human beings 
and animals, e.g., Leda and the swan, the ladies of the 
fairy tales who marry frog princes, etc., the Kafir le- 
gends of Dimiangashe who married the crocodile, and 
Mpimzanyana who became the bride of a five-headed 
snake ; and similar Hindu legends. Here, too, perhaps 
belong the middle age superstitions of incubus and 
succubus. It would of course be absurd to claim li- 
teral beHef for these and similar tales. But at some 
time or other more or less belief was accorded them. 
Imagination does not work in vacuo, nor make bricks 
without straw. This much is e\'ident : that in primitive 
minds there are no high fences between the kingdoms 
of nature; and nowhere does this cosmic democracy 
reveal itself better than in notions of procreation. 

=' Rasmussen, /. c, 194-5; cf. Boas, "Sagen der Indianer in Nord- 
west-America," Ztscft. f. Ethnologie, ssiv., 330-1; xx\'i., 303. 

3*^ Buckley, Phallicism in Japan, 23. 

3^ W. H. Fumess, on Nagas oj Eastern Assam, xxxii. /. A. I., 459. 
The Malays believe that deer sprang from a man who suffered from a 
severe ulcer or abscess on the leg! (Skeat, Malay Magic, 170-1). Cf. 
the Aino myth of human mothers suckling bears which gradually 
developed into men (cited by Tylor, Anthropology, 73). 



Kinship and Relationship 69 

Origin of Babies. — To return to our question, Where 
do babies come from? The repHes of primitive men are 
curious if not illuminating. For instance, among the 
Semang pigmies of the Malay Peninsula, 

"birds are believed to be the vehicles for the introduction 

of souls into the newborn child, and all human souls grow 
upon a soul-tree in the other worid, whence they are 
fetched by a bird which is killed and eaten by the expectant 
mother. "3* 

In Gazaland, 

"the children are told that when men break their bows 
by overstraining them, babies emerge from the spHt in the 
wood. How many a child has watched his father as he 
bent his bow, eagerly anticipating the appearance of a 
baby! "^3 

The Japanese used to ascribe the origin of their babies 
to water; the Chinese, to plants, and called certain 
plants Fa-kimg-mo, i. e., Flower-grandfather and 
mother; the Basutos derived them from the marshes. 
And did not the learned Porphyr^^ think all souls came 
to be bom "because of wat^r"? The ancient Germans 
thought they rode down on storks out of Engelland 
above the clouds, or flew down in the shape of ma^-flies, 
white butterflies, or perhaps in Hghtning flashes. 
Other peoples ascribed them to springs, frogs, stones, 
rocks, caves, the earth, fire, hollow trees, cabbages, 

32 Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, ii., 4, 
192, 194. 

" Kidd, Savage Childhood, 86. 



70 Primitive F'amily and Education 

parsley beds, etc.^^ Jn fact the modem parent's eva- 
sive answer to this question, and his reference of the 
inquirer to a cabbage, a rose, or the knot of a tree is 
merely a survival of such ancient beliefs as that of the 
Aruntas whose ''sky-dweller" ''laid germs of the little 
boys in the mistletoe branches, germs of the little girls 
among the split stones. "^^ Somewhat more ethereal, 
yet scarcely more definite, are the various forms of the 
reincarnation idea ; for example, among certain Austra- 
lian and Melanesian tribes as reported by Codrington. 
With the latter, the child is considered to be the nunu 
(which might be translated the echo) of some dead per- 
son, or of some inanimate object. The metempsychosis 
is perhaps not literal, but the connection is so close that 
the infant takes the place of the deceased. ^^ 

Ignorance of Father's Share in Reproduction. — The 
nunu theory of the Melanesians, especially as applied 
to natural objects, is by no means confined to that 
people; on the contrary it is fairly common, and so 
suggestive that Codrington hinted at its possible ex- 
planation of totemism. And Frazer later built a whole 
theory of totemism on this phase of primitive beHef. 
Codrington in the article above noted says that in the 
island of Aurora, Maewo, in the New Hebrides, "wom- 
en sometimes have a notion that the origin, beginning, 

34PI0SS, Das Kind in Branch u. Sitte der Volker, ii., 12; H6fler, Der 
Kohl, in Hess. Bl. f. Volkskde. (Leipz., 1910), ix., 161-90; Thurawald, 
Ztscft. f. vergl. Rechtswiss., xxiil., 309-64; M'Kenzie, Folk-Lore, xviii., 
253 ff-', Pater, Marius the Epicurean, 12; Claiborne, Mississippi as 
a Province, etc. (Jackson, 1880), i., 519. 

35 Lang, Secret of the Totem, 81. 

^^ Codrington, xviii. J. A. I., 310-11; cf. Mrs. Milne, The Shans at 
Home (Lond., 191 1), p. iii. 



Kinship and Relationship 71 

of one of their children is a cocoanut or a bread-fruit, 
or something of that kind ... it is a fancy of the 
woman before the birth of the child that the infant 
may be the nunu of such an object. ' ' Frazer says : 

*' Naturally enough when she is first aware of the mysteri- 
ous movement within her, the mother fancies that some- 
thing has that very moment passed into her body, and it 
is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain what the 
thing is she should fix upon some object that happened 
to be near her and to engage her attention at the critical 
moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be watching 
a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or bathing 
in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might imagine 
that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed, of water, or of 
a gum-tree, had passed into her, and accordingly, that 
when her child was born, it was really a kangaroo, a grass- 
seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to the bodily eye it 
presented the outward form of a human being." ^^ 

In one of Mr. Yeats' charming collections of Irish folk- 
lore occurs the tale of a king who, in the midst of his 
mourning because he has no son, was advised to get a 
certain fish for his wife to eat. By some mischance 
the cook touched the fish with her finger before it was 
sent up to the queen. Within the year both cook and 
queen bore sons, so alike that they could not he told 
apart. ^^ The fish did it, as in the other cases it was 
the cocoanut, the kangaroo, the grass-seed, or the gum- 
tree. In judging of such ideas we must remember the 

37 Frazer, Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1905, pp. 453, 455-8, etc. See 
Mr. Thomas ' criticism of this theory in his Kinship Organisations, etc., 
pp. 12 ff. 

38 W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight, 209 ff. 



72 Primitive Family and Education 

post hoc, ergo propter hoc to which is prone not only the 
savage, but also every untrained, undisciplined mind. 
Frazer goes so far as to say of the Aruntas that their 
system 

"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the 
cause of offspring, and further, it ignores the tie of blood on 
the maternal as well as the paternal side . . . the natives 
themselves deny explicitly that children are the fruit of 
the commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance 
of natural causation cannot but date from a past immeasur- 
ably remote." 39 

And yet, however remote its origins, survivals of such 
ignorance persist even in present-day America. I have 
encoimtered more than one case of mothers (one in 
particular the mother of seven children) whose ideas in 
this matter were not a whit above the Aruntas*. ^^ 
An excellent mystical rendering of this primitive belief 
is to be found in the late WilHam Vaughn Moody's The 
Daguerreotype: 

"God, how thy ways are strange! 

That this should be indeed 

The flesh which caught my soul, a fljring seed, 

Out of the to and fro 

Of scattering hands where the seedsman Mage 

Stooping from star to star and age to age 

Sings as he sows!" 

39 Frazer, /. c. Cf. letter from Prof. Baldwin Spencer cited by 
Frazer in Man, May, 1912, p. 72: a recent expedition through all the 
tribes extending from north to south across Central Australia found all 
believing that sexual intercourse has nothing, of necessity, to do with 
procreation. 

4 "Here might be cited also current superstitions on the effect of 



Kinship and Relationship 73 

Hence, whatever other inferences are to be drawn 
from such facts, this much is evident, that at least the 
notion of the father's connection with the birth of his 
child is often nebulous and indefinite. And in cases 
where some connection is admitted it is only to the 
extent that the father is believed by the act of copu- 
lation to make the mother's conception and deliverance 
easier, or to prepare her, as it were, for the catching of 
the "flying seed," for the reception of the child-spirit 
from some mysterious exterior source. Such notions of 
course get themselves expressed in codes of conduct and 
systems of relationship. According to the ideas of 
the Yakuts, for instance, the woman has the greater 
share in procreation. A man whose wife gave birth to 
a monstrosity refused any responsibility for it. Their 
word for mother means "the procreatress," but the word 
for father should be translated simply "older man." 
Similarly among the Zuni Indians the name for woman 
is 0-kyay "creator (or maker) of being. "41 A curious 
piece of evidence comes from Australia to show the 
effect of such notions on kinship. Speaking of the 
Dieri people who practice fimeral cannibalism, here an 
honorific rite, a sign of mourning, R. Brough Smyth 
says: 

"The order in which they partake of their dead relatives 
is this: The mother eats of her children; the children 
eat of their mother. Brother-in-law and sister-in-law 

prenatal experiences of the mother in producing birthmarks and mon- 
strous deformations in her offspring. 

4' Sieroshevsky, The Yakuts, translated and arranged By Sumner, 
reprinted from xxxi. J. A. /., pp. 80-92; Gushing, Primitive Mother- 
hood, 27. 



74 Primitive Family and Education 

eat of each other. Uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grand- 
children, grandfather, and grandmother eat of each other. 
But the father does not eat of his offspring, or the off- 
spring of their sire.'^^z 

This is an excellent example of failure to recognize a 
close paternal relation, though the mother connection is 
accepted. But even in cases where the paternal rela- 
tionship is fairly understood, but the maternal clan pre- 
vails as the social unit, the mother is dominant. The 
Seri Indian father, for example, plays second fiddle in 
both domestic and tribal affairs, save in times of actual 
warfare, when the women retire to a subordinate 
legislative place. He has no authority over his chil- 
dren. "There is indeed some question as to the clear 
recognition of paternity ; certainly the females have no 
term for 'my father,' i.e., the term is the same as 
that for *my mother.' "^s "\^e ^re altogether justified, 
then, in concluding that amongst primitive peoples 
paternity is often uncertain not necessarily because of 
promiscuity, but because of ignorance of the vital 
processes involved in procreation. It is evident that 
under the cloud of such uncertainty the father must be 
relegated to an unimportant place in the authority 
over and nurture of the child, unless other beliefs 
and customs overruled or checkmated this particular 
belief. 44 

42 The Aborigines of Victoria^ etc., i., 120; see xvii. J. A. I., p. 186, 

for a different interpretation of this custom. 

43 McGee, Bur. EthnoL, xvii., 272. 

44 1 am quite aware that several writers, among them Mr. Andrew 
Lang and Mr. Howitt, take but little stock in the supposed ignorance 
of some of the peoples mentioned. See, e. g., Lang, Secret of the Totem f 
81 , 124, 191 ; Howitt, in xii. J. A ./., 502. The r61e of the Sky-Father and 



Kinship and Relationship 75 

Couvade. — The widespread custom of the Couvade 
may be interpreted as an attempt artificially to es- 
tablish the father's connection with his offspring. 
If we bear in mind that it obtains almost exclusively 
under the father-family system, and also recall the 
literal power of the *'word" and the "symbol" in 



Earth-Mother in Creation myths reveals a general notion of sex func- 
tions. Yet they are evidently products of later anthropomorphism. 
On the other hand, Mr. E. S. Hartland in his Study of Primitive 
Paternity (Lond., 1910) attributes the general belief in supernatural 
birth to ignorance of the physical relation of father to child. To the 
same source must be attributed also the myths surrounding the birth 
of Buddha, Christ, and other religion-heroes. See, e. g., L. de Milloni's 
article on resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity in Musee 
Guimet Conferences, vol. xxx. The existence of Phallic cults might 
be offered as an argument against the position here assumed. It is 
true that Phallicism formed an integral part generally of Oriental religion 
(India, Greece, Rome, ancient Egypt, but not the Parsees); in the 
Japanese cult of InyOsaki; the Teutonic Fricco; the ancient Mexican 
corn-festival ochpaniztli. But it is doubtful if Phallicism in Japan was 
specially ancient; the myths describing it were not reduced to writing 
till the 8th century A. D. It is therefore impossible to say how much 
of the myth is genuinely ancient and how much is redacteur. I have been 
able to find only scanty traces of Phallicism in savagery. An unimpor- 
tant reference occurs in Johnston's Uganda., ii., 868. Ellis finds phallic 
fertility-divinities among Yorubas and Ewes (Y.-S. P., 78, E.-S. P., 
41-2). See also Bastian, Afrikanische Reisen, 228; Hopkins, Religions 
of India, 413-4, 453 ; Bent, xxii. J. A . I., 124-6; Rossbach, Romische Ehe, 
371; Buckley, Phallicism in Japan; Cushing, Primitive Motherhood, 
41 ; Preuss, ** Phallische Fruchtbarkeits-Damonen," Archiv f. Anthropol., 
xxix., 1293.; Maurer, " Der Phallusdienst bei den Israeliten," 92 Globus, 
257; Nadaillac, Prehistoric America, 159, 338. It is certain that 
Phallicism does not exist among tribes manifesting gross ignorance of 
sex matters. Certainly it is to be found, if at all, only rarely below the 
barbaric stage in human development. Neither should circumcision 
be taken as prima-facie evidence of sex understanding; for it frequently 
is purely a tribal mark, without the slightest reference to the pro- 
creative process. 



76 Primitive Family and Education 

primitive philosophy, we may explain the Couvade as a 
symbolic act whereby the father recognizes his relationship 
to the child, expresses his interest in it, and attempts to 
render its entry into the world as safe and auspicious as 
possible. This solicitude commonly expresses itself in a 
system of taboos , usually on food and labor of certain kinds, 
A Panguan blacksmith of Borneo said *'that he could 
not touch any ironwork without the body of his infant 
son turning the color of fire; and on his lifting the 
hammer while engaged at his forge, the child instantly 
commenced screeching and crying. **4s Among the 
Indians of Guiana, 

"if the father infringes any of the rules of couvade, for 
a time after the birth of the child, the latter suffers. For 
instance, if he eats the flesh of the water-haas (capybara), 
a large rodent with very protruding teeth, the teeth of the 
child will grow as those of the animal; or if he eats the 
flesh of the spotted skinned labba, the child's skin will 
become spotted. Apparently there is also some idea 
that for the father to eat strong food, to wash, to smoke, 
or to handle weapons, would have the same result as if 
the new-born baby ate such food, washed, smoked, or 
played with edged tools." ^^ 

The role of sympathetic magic in such regulations is 
almost too obvious for mention. They rest, so it seems, 
on notions of communication, sympathy, and parallel- 
ism in primitive psychology, on some *' mere imaginative 
theory of sympathy, the basis of all sympathetic 

45 H. Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, etc., i., 98. 

46 E. F. im Thum, Among the Indians of Guiana, 218-9; cf. similar 
taboos among Nyasa (Gurbutt, Man, March, 1912, p. 40). 



Kinship and Relationship 77 

magic. "47 The relationship-symbolism is to my mind 
no less evident, though it has been abundantly ques- 
tioned. M. Giraud-Teulon regards the Couvade as an 
imitation of nature, intended to give color to the fiction 
that the father had brought forth the child, and was for 
it a second mother, such a pretense being the only way 
in which a bond could be established between the father 
and his child. ^^ Such a fiction is quite comparable 
to that of adoption. But neither of them could have 
prevailed except in a fairly high culture status. It is 
evident, then, that if even in such higher cultures a 
fiction was necessary to estabHsh a natural relation, the 
naturalness of the relation must have escaped observers 
of that time, and still more so the peoples of remoter 
times. 49 

47 Andrew Lang, in his Preface to Ling Roth's Natives of Sarawak, 
etc., p. viii. 

48 La Mhre, 33; Les Origines du Manage, etc., 138^. 

49 There is an abundant bibliography on Couvade, and an equally 
wide diversity of opinion. Ploss, Das Kind, i., 144-60, gives an 
excellent digest of the extent and meaning of the custom. Peschel, 
/. c, 24-5, gives many examples and references. Also Thurston, 
Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, 547 #.; Codrington, Melanesians, 
228-9. -A- classic case occurs in the medieval French romance Aucassin 
and Nicollet. Bachofen, Frazer, and Tylor make it a symbolic pretense, 
a legal fiction, whereby the father asserts his paternity. Tylor at one 
time emphasized the "sympathetic magic" side of many of these rites; 
and this is the common theory, e.g.y im Thum, Lubbock. Crawley 
{Mystic Rose, 416 Jf.) sees in it a form of ''disguise," whereby the father 
simulates the mother and substitutes himself for her to fool any ma- 
levolent spirits that might be lurking about, and to ward off their evil 
influence (birth being peculiarly liable to spirit machinations). H. 
Ling, Roth (xxii. J. A. I., 224-40) makes it a magical rite; transition to 
paternal family incidental but not causal. Hellwald, Die Menschliche 
Familie, 362: an expiatory offering to the malevolent spirits which 
threaten the child. Lippert, Die Geschichte der Familie, 213 ff.; 



78 Primitive Family and Education 

Terms of Relationship. — Primitive language also 
offers some evidence as to the hazy ideas of parenthood 
held by lower peoples. Morgan worked out an elabo- 
rate theory of relationship in early society based upon a 
study of rudimentary languages. We are not bound 
to accept his conclusions of primeval communism, 
group marriage, etc., nor indeed do we need to push too 
literally his scheme of classificatory relationship. We 
are, however, justified in interpreting his data as prov- 
ing group solidarity and loose family ties. 5° Personal 
relationship plays a large part in primitive language. 
More than that, "the fundamental personal conception 
is an ^our' or 'we' in which ^my' and T are involved but 
not distinguished . " ^ ' It is collective ; it regards certain 
human beings as forming a group, and this group as 
including the members. Language, we cannot doubt, 
arose in the group. Its first efforts, then, would pro- 
ably express the relations of thing and thought common 
to all members of the group at the same time; and 

Kidturgeschichte, ii., 312: a redemption sacrifice rendered by the father 
in place of actual sacrifice of the first born. Mr. Gerald Massey, The 
Natural Genesis, i., 117 ff.: asserts that in the Couvade the parent 
identifies himself with the infant child, into which he has been typically 
transformed; and tries to explain it by a reference to IQiefr, the Egyptian 
god, who was the creator by transformation. This view seems gratui- 
tously far-fetched. It implies a belief in sympathetic magic; but the 
methods of sympathetic magic and their application to the case in point 
are to my mind much more intelligibly dealt with by Mr. im Thum. 

so See Morgan, Ancient Soc, chapters on Classificatory Relation- 
ship; an early observation of this institution may be found in Father 
Lafitau's Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains (Paris, 1724), i., 552. The 
criticisms of Morgan's theory have been peculiarly persistent and 
severe. See, e. g., Crawley, M. R., 468 #.; Wake, /. c, 129, 271, 331; 
Thomas, K. and M. in A., chap. xi. 

s^ E. J. Payne, History of America, ii., 183-4. 



Kinship and Relationship 79 

these would be conceived by each member as affecting 
not merely himself but all his co-members, s"* This 
collective or we-form is very common in the grammar of 
American aboriginal language; and the selective or 
I -form less common, exceptional, in fact. 

"The principle of considering personality as at the same 
time collective and selective seems to have been so deeply 
ingrained in the habit of thought, that it extended itself 
not merely to the first person singular, but to the second 
person as well as the first, and even to the third as well 
as the first and second; and the plural forms of these 
persons are thus modified as well as the singular ones.*'^^ 

It was inevitable that with the growth of intelligence, 
the selective / and mine must more and more emerge. 
Whose deer is this? might well be answered ourSy by a 
member of some primitive group. But, Whose child 
is this? must in time have elicited a more or less clear- 
cut mine. Yet we might conceive of a time when ours 
would have answered either question satisfactorily. 
Indeed, Professor Kohler in a series of articles ardently 
defending Morgan's theories, especially of group mar- 
riage, asserts that the primeval collectivity of women pe- 
culiar to group marriage would have produced exactly 
this phenomenon. If all the members of a certain 
generation called a collectivity of men *' fathers,** and 

s» See for discussion on this social character of knowledge, W. 
Jerusalem in Die Zukunftj 1909, pp. 236-46; E. Durkheim, Annee 
Sociologique, xi.; W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, ii., 56-58; Waitz, 
Anthropology, i., 277; K. Pearson, Grammar of Science, 3d ed., i., 184; 
Levy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures, 37, 
35. etc. 

S3 Payne, /. c, 188. 



8o Primitive Family and Education 

''mothers" a collectivity of women (according to 
Morgan's system of classification), it was because they 
considered themselves as the issue of this group of men 
and this group of women. For the primitive man the 
group of women whom he calls "mothers" forms a real 
individual, a single personality endowed with a plurality 
of genital organs. Hence it is not surprising to find that 
he considered himself peculiarly related to this multiple 
personality. All of which would mean, too, that every 
child is ours to the group mother, s 4 This view of 
collective parenthood is perhaps purely fantastic as 
M. Durkheim sharply insists, ss Yet the matter of 
group marriage, and, in fact, the whole question of 
primitive marriage, is still such debatable territory that 
we cannot dismiss off-hand even such a theory as this, 
the more so, considering the many curious anomalies 
and inconsistencies presented in primitive mind. To 
exclaim, Absurd ! in no wise disposes of a group of facts 
or even conjectures concerning savage life. Whatever 
the literal truth in Professor Kohler's theory, there still 
remains the strong probability of a close, if unintelli- 
gent, feeling of group solidarity. 

Other facts seem to bear out this assumption. Among 
savage and barbarous tribes, Morgan says there is no 

54 Kohler, "Ueber Totemismusu.Urehe," m Ztscft. f.vergl.Rechtswiss,, 
xix., 171-88; "Eskimo u. Gruppenehe," ihid., xix., 423-32; "Nochmals 
ueber Gruppenehe u. Totemismus," ihid. xxi., 252-67. 

ss VAnnee Sociologigue, 1906-9, 360; it is perhaps to us fantastic, 
but it is none the less true, that the combining of totems due to in- 
tertribal fusion gave rise frequently to notions of multiple parenthood, 
especially where divine fetish-totem ancestors were concerned. The 
Egyptian king Thotmes IV, e.g., had for his divine father all the four 
gods Hormachu, Ra, Tum, and Chepra; hence group parenthood is not 
a priori inconceivable. 



Kinship and Relationship 8i 

name for the family; whatever personal names exist, 
either have no family reference, or indicate the gensJ^ 
This is clearly brought out in the Australian mar- 
riage system. A paucity of general concepts, with its 
correlative lack of general terms in language, existed 
among the Indians of Lower California; and to such an 
extent that our ideas of duty and relationship were un- 
intelligible to them. The impossibility of expressing 
the general idea ** father '* made it hopeless for Baegert 
to impress on these Indians any idea of the obligations 
of a father toward his children. ^ 7 Gomme insists in 
opposition to Thomas that the lack of a term to express 
definite relationship between mother and child in 
Australian language is not due to meagemess of lan- 
guage, but because the physical fact is of no signifi- 
cance. ^^ This contention seems to be sustained by 
the Yakut language. 

"The Yakuts employ the term 'child' or 'my child' 
not only to their own proper children, but also to the 
children of brothers, or of sisters, or even to brothers and 
sisters themselves, if they are very much younger. They 
have not, therefore, in their genealogical terminology any 
words for son and daughter which testify directly to a 
blood relationship between specific persons. The word 
which we translate 'son' strictly means 'boy,' 'youth,* 

sMwc. Soc, 78, 227, 233, etc. 

57 Baegert, /. c, 394-8. 

s8 Gomme, /. c, 232; cf. Schrader, Preh. Antiq., 379: "No termi- 
nology distinguishing with precision between the ascendants of the 
father and the mother" can be traced in original Indo-European 
languages. This he attributes to the lowly position of the aged in 
ethnic society; e.g., the Old High German word for parent was eltiron = 
the old ones. 

6 — 



S2 Primitive Family and Education 

'young person.' It was formerly used as a collective 
for the body of warriors, or the young men of the tribe 
or sib. With the addition of the possessive 'my,' this 
term is addressed vituperatively by old men not only to 
their own sons by blood, but also to any young males who 
stand in any relationship to them. In a narrow sense, 
it may be addressed to one's own son, or, with a prefix, 
to one's grandson, and then with other proper prefixes, 
to grandnephews of the second and third degree. The 
terms for females are entirely parallel in sense and use. 
The lack of words to distinguish between 'son' and 
*boy,* 'daughter' and 'girl,' is not due to the poverty 
of the language; on the contrary, their genealogical terms 
astonish us by their abundance and variety. ... In 
view of the great abundance of the denominatives for 
relationships which we should regard as relatively remote, 
of the lack of special terms for 'son' and 'daughter,' and 
of the confusion of these with more remote degrees of 
relationship and likewise with the expressions 'boy' and 
'girl,' which they use to indicate especially sex and point 
of growth, we infer beyond a doubt that, at the time 
when the present system of genealogical relationships 
took its origin amongst the Yakuts, the precise genetic 
connection of any given hoy with his parents had no especial 
denomination y ^^ 

A final quotation from Codrington should make clear 
the view of parental imcertainty here maintained. 

"In Mota the word used for mother is the same that is 
used for the division, veve, with a plural sign ra veve. And 
it is not that a man's kindred are so called after his mother, 
but that his mother is called his kindred, as if she were the 
representative of the division to which he belongs ; as if he 

59 Sieroshevsky-Sumner, /. c, 90-1. 



Kinship and Relationship 83 

were not the child of a particular woman, but of the whole 
kindred for whom she has brought him into the world . . . 
the wife or husband has the plural designation, because the 
individual man or woman represents all the rest who are in 
a position to be wives or husbands."^" 

I am fully alive to the pitfalls which philology offers to 
the student of sociology or ethnology. The discussion 
in this paragraph pretends to nothing except that 
language suggests itself as in accord with other lines of 
evidence. 

Rise of Paternity. — We have already noted the 
conventional nature of primitive kinship, and also that 
the order of relationships stood among savages some- 
what as follows : mother-child, maternal ; brother-sister, 
fraternal; brother-sister's children, avuncular. But 
this sequence no longer holds good in the higher cul- 
ture stages, especially after the transition to the father- 
family. The paternal begins to take precedence over 
the maternal relation. When, for example, De Hontan 
inquired of the American Indians why they always bore 
their mother's name, they replied that as children re- 
ceived their souls from their father and their bodies 
from their mother, it was reasonable that the maternal 
name should be perpetuated.^^ Bachofen would have 
considered such a statement as the mark of a pretty 
high culture status, for he wrote in similar vein : 

"Ueber das korperliche Dasein erhebt sich das geistige, 
und der Zusammenhang mit den tiefern Kreisen der 
Schopfung wird nun auf jenes beschrankt. Das Mutter- 

^° Codrington, xviii. J. A. I., 306-8. 

^' De Hontan, Mem. de VAmer, Sept. (1724), ii., 154. 



84 Primitive Family and Education 

thum gehort der leiblichen Seite der Menschen, und nur 
f iir diese wird f ortan sein Zusammenhang mit den ubrigen 
Wesen f estgehalten ; das vaterlich-geistige Prinzip eignet 
ihm allein. In diesem durchbricht er die Banden des 
Tellurismus, und erhebt seinen Blick zu den hohern 
Regionen des Kosmos." ^* 

And did not Swedenborg declare that the soul, which is 
spiritual and is the real man, comes from the father; 
while the body, which is natural and, as it were, the 
vestments of the soul, is of the mother? ''Among the 
Greeks," says Wake, ''the father was endowed with 
creative power, was clothed with the divine character 
but not the mother, who was only the bearer and 
nourisher of the child." ^^ iEschylus in the Eumenides 
expresses the idea thus : 

**. . . Mark me! whom we call 
The mother begets not ; she is but the nurse. 
Whose fostering breast the new-sown seed receives. 
The father truly gets; the dam but cherishes 
A stranger-bud, that, if the gods be kind. 
May blossom soon, and bear. Behold a proof! 
Without a mother may a child be born, 
Not so without a father. Which to witness 
Here is this daughter of Olympian Jove. . . ."^^ 

Gothic language had no common term for "parent," 
the nearest approach being fadreifiy literally "father- 

^^ Das Mutterrecht, p. xxvii. 

'^aWake, /. c.,261. 

^4 Blackie's translation. Euripides makes Orestes voice a similar 
argument (Orest., 543); cf. M6nard, La Vie privee des Anciens^ 
ii., 63. But Lippert argues for exclusive mother-kinship in pre-classic 
Greece {Gesch. der Familie, 15-16.) 



Kinship and Relationship 85 

hood." ^5 M. Menard in his Vie Privee des Anciens says 
that the idea of the father as creator of the child, and 
the mother as merely its nourisher, was common to all 
antiquity/^ This accords with the classical tradition 
that among the Egyptians no child was reputed illegiti- 
mate, even though he was bom of a slave mother, 
as they looked upon the father as the sole author of the 
being of the child, to whom the mother was but the 
purveyor of food and lodging. Some Australian 
natives are said to hold the same opinion. Mr. Howitt 
relates that a black fellow once remarked to him, 
**The man gives the child to a woman to take care of 
for him, and he can do whatever he likes with his own 
child. "^7 Among the Tupinambas of Brazil it was 
common for a man to give his own women as wives to 
male captives, and then without scruple to eat the 
children when they grew up, ''holding them simply to be 
of the flesh and blood of their enemies. "^^ Schrader 
holds that in general throughout Indo-European 
antiquity, 

*'the wife belongs to the man, body and soul, and what 
she produces is his property, as much as the calf of his 
cow, or the crop of his fields. The husband therefore 
regards the child of his wife and another man as his own, 
provided only it was begotten with his will."^' 

^5 Schrader, /. c, 371. 

66 Tome ii., p. 4, 63. 67 Wake, /. c, 262. 

68 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 299, after Southey. 

69 L. c, 388. It is difficult to say whether in such cases as this the 
notion of paternity springs from economic interests or vice versa; 
at any rate the conventional nature of such kinship is apparent. Cf. 
Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 119. 



86 Primitive Family and Education 

According to Sir G. Campbell, even where mother 
descent prevails, it does not mean the rule of the female, 
but only that she ''is used as the family seed-bed." 7<> 
With facts such as these before us we are not un- 
prepared for St. Thomas Aquinas*s dictum that genera- 
tive power belonged to the father only; or for the 
persistence in English law even to the present day of 
the principle that the father is the parent. The point 
which stands out clearly from this as from preceding 
paragraphs is that the family as we know it, a social 
microcosm composed of members in fairly equal and 
well-defined relationships, did not exist in primitive 
times; and that with such indefinite or conflicting 
notions concerning relationship, the family qua family, 
could not have exerted the enormous disciplinary and 
educational force commonly attributed to it. This 
point will recur again and again in the course of our 
study. , , 

The Men's House.-^The effect of sex taboos and 
sex solidarity in weakening the familial organization 
has already been pointed out. We have seen how 
the working of such a system of taboos separated the 
parents from one another. We shall now examine the 
custom of separating the children of the family from 
their parents, by means of men's and women's houses 
and similar institutions. Take, for example, the 
Indian estufa: ''Each clan," says Bandelier, "had its 
own estufa, and the young men slept in it under the 
surveillance of one or more of the aged principals, until 
they married, and frequently even afterward. "^^ 
Bontoc Igorot "boys from 3 or 4 years of age and all 

T>J.A. /., xviii., 271. 71 The Delight Makers, 19. 



Kinship and Relationship 87 

men who have no wives sleep nightly in the pa-ba-f u- 
nan or in the f a-wi. . . . The pa-ba-fii-nan is the man's 
club by day, and the immarried man's dormitory by 
night. " The same writer says elsewhere that 

"after the child is about 2 years of age it is not customary 
for it to sleep longer at the home of the parents; the girl 
goes nightly to the olag, and the boy to the pabafunan or 
the f awi. . . . The Igorot child as a rule knows its parents' 
home only as a place to eat. There is almost an entire 
absence of anything which may be called home life."^^ 

Among the Jaluo of the Uganda Protectorate, ''young 
unmarried girls usually sleep together in one large hut 
under the care of an old woman. The young men and 
boys of the village also sleep by themselves. " ^^ The same 
system prevails among the Wakikuyu.'''* Among the 
Nagas of Eastern Assam the bachelors' house is called 
morang; it is also the assembly room for councils and 
dances. "These bachelor buildings are always the ver- 
itable home of the youths from early boyhood, until 
they marry and establish a household of their own."^^ 
Another writer notes of the same people: "only very 
young children live entirely with their parents. "^*^ Among 
the Dravidian tribes of India both men and women 
have separate secret society houses where they sleep; 
one of these tribal fraternities is called the Dhum- 
kuria: "They have a regular system of fagging in this 

" Jenks, 5ow/oc Jgoro/, 50-1, 62. 
'3 Johnston, Uganda, ii., 780, 626. 

74 Purvis, Uganda to ML Elgon, 70. Evidently not an unmixed 
blessing, for this author notes that though they are supposedly under 
supervision, yet "there is a good deal of free intercourse between the 
young people. " 

75 W. H. Fumess, xxxii. J. A. I., 450-4. 

'^ S. H. Damant, in Calcutta Review, Ixi., 93, cited by Jenks. 



88 Primitive Family and Education 

curious institution," says Dalton. "The small boys 
serve those of larger growth, shampoo their limbs, and 
comb their hair, etc., and they are sometimes subjected 
to severe discipline to make men of them."^^ Children 
of the Bororo tribe of Brazil go to the BahitOy or men's 
house, as soon as they are weaned.''^ Of the Papuans 
Hagen writes: 

"So soon as the boy has rec ivedhis met (girdle) at four 
years of age he enters public life; he leaves his mother and 
passes to the Men's House of the family, where he sleeps 
until the time of his marriage."^' 

In discussing the various educational agencies among 
primitive peoples we shall return to the role of these 
men's houses; suffice it here to indicate the influence 
they must have in preventing a close familial relation. 
Most of the functions which we are in the habit of 
associating with the family {e.g.^ protection, sociability, 
training in "minor morals'*) devolve upon these extra- 
familial institutions. They sometimes hinder the 
development of a distinctively domestic type of in- 
dustry (Hauswirtschaft) , They are also often con- 
nected closely with puberty rites, initiation ceremonies, 
and other educational devices.^** 

"E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnol. of Bengal, 248 (Calcutta, 
1872). 78 Fri^ and Radin, xxvi. J. A. I., 388. 

79 B. Hagen, Vnter den Papua's, 234. 

8° Further references on this subject: Bucher, Entstehung der 
Volkswirtschaft, 43-4; /. A. I., ii., 393; xi., 248; xxxiv., 256; Codring- 
ton, Melanesians, 231-6; O. Finsch, Ethnologische Erfahrungen, iii., 
306-7; Sir Hugh Low, Sarawak, Its Inhabitants, etc. (Lond., 1848), 
280; Curr, The Australian Race, i., 71-2; Joske, in Intern. Archiv 
f. Ethnogr., ii., 254-71 ; Fison, xiv. J.A, I., 2gff.; Semon, In the Austral. 
Bush, 324; Furness, Island of Stone Money, 21, 36 Jf.; Hodson, Folk- 
Lore, xxi., 296-312; Northcote, xxxvii. J. A. I., 61; Ankermann, Ztscft.f. 
Ethnol., xlii., 289-310; see also post, ch. vii. 



Kinship and Relationship 89 

Ceremonial Acquiring of Group Kinship. — The in- 
sufficiency of the family tie and the subordination of 
close consanguinity to the somewhat mystical concept 
of group kinship is well illustrated by certain puberty 
rites and ceremonies. For instance, in West Africa, 
the youth who is to be initiated into the secret society 
which comprises the larger life of the community is 
isolated, and subjected to rigorous discipline, the whole 
purport of which is the death of the youth to his old 
familial life and his resurrection to the larger group 
life. He becomes a new man ; his name even is changed ; 
he learns sometimes a new language; he forgets, or 
pretends to forget, all his past life. At first he affects 
to recognize no one, and to be imable even to masticate 
his food, which office friends must perform for him. 
*'When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and 
drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the 
fetish man must teach him and direct him in every 
motion, like the smallest child." This pretended 
ignorance also extends to customs of the country, such 
as washing or rubbing with oil. The Dutch ethnolo- 
gist Riedel adds several picturesque details in hi& 
observation of this custom : 

"When they return to their homes they totter in their 
walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten 
how to walk properly ; or they enter the house by the back 
door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it 
upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants 
by signs only. . . . Their sponsors have to teach them all 
the common acts of life, as if they were new-born children." 

This renunciation of the blood tie is sometimes attended 
by either real or dissembled and symbolic weeping on 



90 Primitive Family and Education 

the part of mothers and sisters. Such rites are pretty 
generally distributed over the primitive world. Frazer 
gives them almost wholly a religious character and 
makes them the act of indentification of the individual 
with his totem, or "an exchange of life or souls between 
the man and his totem." He finds the rite prevalent 
in New South Wales, Queensland, Fiji, Congo valley, 
Quoja on the west coast of Africa, in several islands west 
of New Guinea, in the west of Ceram ; also traces of it 
subsisting in Brahmanism, as revealed by a text in 
the laws of Manu.^^ The significant thing about it 
for our purposes is the identification of the individual 
with the larger social group, and his subordination and 
allegiance to it rather than to the narrower family 
group. 

8^ See Lippert, ii., 341-2; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii., 342-57; id., 
Totemism and Exogamy, i., 43-4; W. H. Bentley, Lije on the Congo 
(Lond., 1887), 78/.; Lawson, H. of iV. C, 381; Chevrier, L' Anthropolo- 
gic, xvii., 372-3; Kulischer, Ztscft.f. Ethnol.^ xv., 194 #. 



CHAPTER V 

PRIMITIVE PARENTAL AND FILIAL RELATIONS 

Effect of Feeble Memory. — In the discussion of 
primitive mental outfit in Chapter I, the feeble memory 
powers of primitive peoples in general were remarked. 
Such a mental trait must have had considerable influence 
in the evolution of parenthood. Intellectual or formal 
memory is a social product. Like all other aspects of 
mind, the power of recall is a development through 
necessity. If the mind as a whole is "an organ of 
service for the control of environment in relation to the 
ends of the life process,"' so must we consider each 
phase of its activity. For mind is a unit, and memory 
is not a "faculty" separable from the entire mind- 
content or mind-activity. If the child or the savage 
seems to us devoid of this particular form of mental 
expression, the reason lies partly within the mind, but 
equally without, in the absence of circumstances and 
conditions to evoke such activity. Memory and the 
lack of it are indices of certain social arrangements, 
and contrariwise. Hence when we are told that the 
memory of the Veddah, for example, is so fleeting that 
one of them has been known to forget the name of his 

' John Dewey, Psychol. Rev., ix., 219. 

91 



92 Primitive Family and Education 

wife from whom he had been separated for three days, 
or at least could only recall it after long reflection; or 
that another could not remember the names of his dead 
father and mother;^ or that the islanders visited by 
Captain Cook lost in two or three generations all record 
of such a remarkable occurrence; or that in general 
the memory of the dead fades out of savage minds 
after a very few years; we may reasonably conclude that 
there was no demand for this type of memory among 
these peoples; and furthermore, that institutions de- 
pendent to no small degree upon recoUective power 
could not subsist in its absence. Still further, since 
memory is an important element in the parental and 
familial relation, there seems to be some close connec- 
tion between the absence of memory, the loose family 
bond, and the lack of purposive home-directed edu- 
cation among low-grade peoples. The savage's memory 
is in full working order when questions of personal life 
maintenance appear. ^ But with questions of more 
or less abstract duty it fimctions sluggishly and with 
painful effort. Now the care of children and the aged 
comprises largely just such questions of duty, and just 
in so far as they are problems of duty are they im- 
perfectly solved or not solved at all. If they can be 

2 See Letoumeau, Vevol. de r education, 36; there seems to be here 
no question of a name-taboo. 

3 Steinmetz says {Ethnol. Studien, etc., I, 313-4): "Ich glaube, 
dass allerdings das Gedachtniss des Wilden sehr kurz ist, doch dass 
dies nicht auf alien Gebieten in gleichem Maasse der Fall ist. . . . Es 
geht hieraus eben hervor, dass das Gedachtniss des Naturmenschen 
gar nicht kurz ist fiir all dasjenige, worauf er im Kampfe um das 
Dasein angewiesen ist oder womit er taglich verkehrt, indem er aus 
irgend einem Grunde sein Interesse erregt. " C/. Letoumeau, /. c, 
68-9; Perez, UArt et la Poesie chez Venfant, 203. 



Parental and Filial Relations 93 

expressed in terms of emotion or pleasurable feelings, 
or when the general level of social intelligence evokes 
and keeps alive this peculiar type of duty-memory, 
problems of parental or filial conduct stand a better 
chance of solution. Hence we are driven to conclude 
that the parental mind left to itself would express itself in 
a zigzag policy of emotional conduct toward the child 
unless the group furnished a solid background of ex- 
perience and memory with which to check and govern 
and eke out the individual parentis duty-memory. 

Parental Affection. — We have already examined the 
marital tie between parents and found it, to say the 
least, unstable, and therefore not conducive to intimate 
or efficient family life. The relation between parents 
and children has likewise for various reasons to be 
adjudged weak and far from the ideal we now conceive 
for such a relation. But so far we have approached the 
parental question, obliquely, so to speak, or from with- 
out. It remains to look a little more closely into details 
of the family life of oiir ethnic forbears and contempo- 
raries. First, then, the question of parental sentiment. 
Who has not thrilled over that poetic burst in the New 
Testament, 

'* O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets? 
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often 
would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
not? " 

Many writers appear to find excellent confirmations of 
this yearning and affection among the higher animals, 
notably the birds, but also the monkeys, and even some 



94 Primitive Family and Education 

reptiles and fishes. ^ That there exist some such 
stirrings of emotion I cannot doubt, for quite apart from 
the writings of " nature fakers ** there are many examples 
of apparent love and heroism among so-called dumb 
brutes; but to interpret them with Sutherland as 
"graces of an indubitably moral character '* is somewhat 
straining the truth. I am disposed to refer them to 
contact-pleasure in its several forms; but that need 
in no way detract from their beauty, or from our 
admiration of them. 

Upon the same basis should be placed much of the 
*' affection '* manifested by savage parents. It is not an 
"innate instinct,'* but rather a product of social devel- 
opment, through selection, s There is no doubt that 
the majority of savages display more or less marked 
affection toward and care for their offspring, and union 
for their defense. Hundreds of ethnographic observa- 
tions might be cited to prove this assertion. But in 
nearly every case it might also be shown that the mani- 
festation was rather biologic or crudely emotional than 
rational in character. Crantz foimd amongst the 
Greenlanders " traces of a stronger love between Parents 

^ Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i., chap, 
ii.-v., particularly pp.69, 93, 172; Parsons, The Family, 21-23. For a 
flagrant case of the opposite, see Richard Semon, In the Australian 
Bush, 165. 

s In Tahiti, "on prefere souvent les enfants adopt^s (tamarii 
faaama) h. ses propres enfants" (Huguenin, Raiatea La Sacree, 
173); same occurs sometimes in Fiji; see also Ploss, D. K., ii., 393; 
Wake, I. c, 2, calls it a "secondary" instinct and insists it is parental, 
not merely maternal. Starcke considers 'paternal love' as sociologic, 
not instinctive {La famille dans les differentes societes, p. 202). Sum- 
ner (Folkways, 494) says: "There is no 'natural affection. * There 
is habit and familiarity. " 



Parental and Filial Relations 95 

and Children, and of the many passions rising from it, 
than there are in other nations." Yet he goes on to 
say that this parental relation savors rather of animal 
instinct than human reason/ Still stronger is the 
biologic note in Williams' accotmt of the Fijians: 

*' I have been astonished to see the broad breast of a most 
ferocious savage heave and swell with strong emotion on 
bidding his aged father a temporary farewell. I have 
listened with interest to a man of milder mold, as he told 
me about his eldest son — ^his head, his face, his mien — the 
admiration of all who saw him. Yet this father assisted 
to strangle his son; and the son first named buried his father 
alive! Generally speaking, and with but few exceptions, 
suspicion, reserve, and distrust pervade the domestic 

^ Hist, of Greenland, I., 189. Here might be cited other purely- 
animal traits in primitive parenthood, notably the nuzzling or "nosing" 
of the Africans, the licking of babies instead of washing them, e.g., 
among the Tibetans and Innuits {Smithson. Rep., 1893, 724; Reclus, 
Prim. Folk, 381). Ploss, ii., 339, goes more into detail: "Ob man bei 
den Eskimo {Inuit) von einer 'Erziehung' der Kinder sprechen darf, 
ist sehr zweifelhaft; denn wenn gleich unter ihnen die Kinder von 
ihren Miittern im allgemeinen zartlich, ja sogar mit iibergrosser Zart- 
lichkeit behandelt werden, so wird doch immerhin die geistige Pflege 
des Sprosslings wohl ebenso thierisch sein wie die leibliche. Letztere 
charakterisiert sich dadurch, dass das neugeborene Kind von der 
Mutter geleckt wird, und dass auch in spaterem Alter die Kleinen, 
die bis zum 7 Jahre so wohl in der Kapuze getragen, als auch ebenso 
lange gesaugt werden, von der Mutter nur durch Ablecken, nie durch 
Abwaschen vom Schmutze gereinigte werden; auch das Putzen der 
Nase wird von der Mutter lediglich mit dem Munde besorgt"! See 
also Dr. Robinson, in N. Amer. Rev., clix., 467-78. Schomburgk 
saw in Guiana Arekuna mothers nursing monkeys and the babies at 
the same time; and observed that the training of both was identical; 
that the monkeys formed part of the family and ate with it regularly. 
(Cited by Wuttke from Ausland, 1843, no. 288.) 



96 Primitive Family and Education 

relationship, and a happy and united household is most 
rare."7 

Speaking by and large, we may accept Sutherland's 
generalization that 

"their affection for their children is an instinct of race 
preservation analogous to that of the lower animals, and 
gratifying itself without restraint. The savage knows 
little of that higher affection subsequently developed 
which has a worthier purpose than merely to disport itself 
in the mirth of childhood, and at all hazards to avoid the 
annoyance of seeing its tears.^ 

In brief, savage parenthood contains a large element of 
self-indulgence; when other considerations, such as 
temper, food-shortage, nomadry, step in, the child is 
sacrificed; under ordinary circumstances he is almost 
universally and abominably spoiled. Thanks to other 
forces, however, he is made to walk more or less in the 
straight and narrow way in spite of the parental 
indulgence he has suffered. 

We accept, with the proviso mentioned, the state- 
ments of many competent observers when they speak of 
savage parents as" deeply attached," '' kind and gentle," 
"entirely devoted"; or as treating their children ''with 
great affection," "kindest attention," "tenderest affec- 
tion," etc. 9 Mr. Lummis, for example, says of the 

7 Williams and Calvert, Fiji^ io6; cf. Hyades on the Fuegians {Bull, 
de la Soc, d'Anthrop., x., 331): "Les parents aiment beaucoup leurs 
enfants" but "Rien ne s'opposerait k la vente des enfants s'il y avait 
des acquereurs. " 

8 Sutherland, /. c, i., 119. 

9 It is manifestly impossible to include in the text the great mass of 
ethnographic notes on this subject. The following bibliography aims 



Parental and Filial Relations 97 

Pueblos: *'An unhappy home is almost an unknown 
thing among them; and the imiversal affection of 
parents for children and respect of children for parents 
are extraordinary. "^° And Mme. Pommerol goes 
so far as to say of the tribes of the Sahara, that nowhere 
in all Europe could be found such kindly treatment of 

to include certain typical cases: Mrs. Allison, "Similkameen Indians 
of British Columbia," xxi. /. A. /., 316; Bonney, "Aborigines of River 
Darling, N. S. W., " xiii. J. A. I., 125; Brunache, Centre de VAfrique, 135; 
Bishop, Among the Tibetans, 95 ; Boas, " Central Eskimo," Bur. Ethn., vi., 
580; Codrington, Melanesians, 244; Crantz, /. c, i., 186; Crawfurd, 
Hist, of Indian ArchipeL, 82 ; Delafosse, " Le Peuple L^na ou Senoufs," in 
Rev. des Etudes Ethnogr. et Social., No. 11-12, p. 484; Eastman, Indian 
Boyhood, 17; Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahrungen, iii., 31; Featherman, Social 
Hist, of Mankind, ist div., 154, 198, 288, 304, 566, 599, 622; Sir C. B. 
Flower, in xviii. 7. ^ . /. , 8 1 ; Forbes, " Ethnol. of Timor-laut,' ' xiii. J. A. I., 
20; Gardiner, "Natives of Rotuma," xxvii. J. A. I., 408; Grabowsky, 
" Gebrauche der Dajaken Sudost Bomeos bei der Geburt," Globus, 72 
(1897), 271 ; Haddon, "Ethnogr. of West. Tr. of Torres Str.," xix. J. A. I., 
316; Huguenin, Raiatea La Sacree, 174; im Thum, Am. the Ind. of 
Guiana, 213, 219; Johnston, Uganda, ii., 539; Miss Kingsley, West. Afr. 
Stud., 168; Kennan, Tent Life in Siberia, 214; Koch, Die Guaikuru- 
stdmme, 106; Loskiel, /. c, 58, 61; Lumholtz "On theTurahumari," in 
Scribner's, Sept., 1894, 298; Mason, Woman's Place in Prim. Cult., 253; 
Mooney, in article "Child Life," in Bur. Ethn. Bulletin 30; McGee, 
"Sen Indians," Bur. Ethn., xvii., II ;. Murdoch, "Ethnol. Results of Pt. 
Barrow Exped.," Bur. Ethn., ix., 41; Phillips, "The Lower Congo," 
xvii. 7. i4. /., 219; Nansen, Eskimo, 103; Ploss, /. c, ii., 335-7; Ratzel, 
/. c, i., 365; ii., 106; Reclus, Prim. Folk, 189; Ling Roth, Aborig. of 
Tasmania, 46; id., Natives of Sarawak, etc., i., 102-3; Skeat and Blag- 
den, Pagan Races of the Malay Pen., i., 528; Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, 
i., 51; Spencer and Gillen, N. T. of C. A., 51; Steinen, Shingu Tribes 
(Berlin Musuem, 1888), 503; Mrs. Stevenson, "On the Zufiis," Bur. 
Ethn., xxiii., 293; Turner, "Ethnol. of the Ungava Distr.," Bur. Ethn., 
xi., 191 ; N. W. Thomas, Kinship and Marr. in Australia, 13; Capt. Cook, 
Voyage to Pacific Ocean, ii., 230; iii., 129-30; Dr. Barbara Renz, "Eltem- 
liebe bei Amerikanischen Stammen," XVI Internal. Amerikanisten Kon- 
gress, vol. xvi., pp. 439-45. 

" The Man Who Married the Moon, 3. 
7 



98 Primitive Family and Education 

children." In some cases children are noted as being 
the real tie between their parents. 

The mortuary customs of many peoples reveal a 
tender regard for their dead children (partly, no doubt, 
from parental affection, but also for the sake of securing 
the friendly offices of their spirits); though perhaps 
an equal number of cases might be cited where the dead 
child is quickly disposed of and forgotten, for in general 
its ghost is little to be feared; and it is to be remem- 
bered that primitive mourning is rather ritualistic than 
emotional." 

Mythology and folklore also have preserved numer- 
ous incidents of parental care and devotion, notably in 
the legends of Buddha and Siva, and in several of Mr. 
Lummis* folk tales of the Southwest. ^^ 'Xh.e fact 
of the matter is that, as a rule, savage children lack not 
affection, but rational affection; that they are loved 
*'not wisely but too well" ; that Mr. Niblock'snoteon the 
Indians of South Alaska and North British Columbia 
to the effect that they "are remarkably fond of and in- 
dulgent to their children, " is fairly typical of the savage 

" Une Femme chez les Sahariennes, 224. 

" See, Th. Fries, Gronland, 121; Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 194; 
Johnston, Lion and Dragon, 251 ; Jenks, Bontoc Igorot, 80; Man, " On the 
Andaman Islanders," xii. /. A. I., .141; Matthews in Am. Anthrop., ii., 
n. s., 500; Morgan, Anc. Soc, 181; Palmer, xiii. J. A. I., 298; R. L. 
Stevenson, In the South Seas, 185; Ratzel, ii., 335; Tylor, Prim. Cult, ii., 
3, 115, 117, 150-I; Wake, i. /. A. I., 71; it is worth while also to call 
attention to the orthodox Hindu scale of rank in burial: the baby being 
of least account is buried in the earth; the adolescent, in water; the 
adult, burned. 

^3 Tylor, Prim Cult., i., 414; ii., 401; Lummis, /. c, especially "The 
Antelope Boy" and "The Accursed Lake"; Rasmussen, People of the 
Polar North, 192, 293. 



Parental and Filial Relations 99 

parental attitude. ^'^ Compare this note with Father 
Baegert's experience with the Lower Califomians. 

"The children," says he,^^ "do what they please, with- 
out fearing reprimand or punishment, however disorderly 
and wicked their conduct may be. It would be well if 
the parents did not grow so angry when their children are 
now and then slightly chastised for gross misdemeanor 
by order of the missionary; but, instead of bearing with 
patience such wholesome correction of their little sons and 
daughters, they take great offense and become enraged, 
especially the mothers, who will scream like furies, tear out 
their hair, beat their naked breasts with a stone, and lacer- 
ate their heads with a piece of wood or bone till the blood 
flows, as I have frequently witnessed on such occasion."'** 

More piquant and equally illuminating is a bit of con- 
fession from Robert Louis Stevenson: "I have seen a 
Patunotuan native turn from me in embarrassment 
and disaffection because I suggested that a brat would 
be the better for a beating ".'^ Let us defer for the 
present any consideration of what effect upon the 
children such animal-like affection and indulgence 
must have. The question of '^spoiling*' children will 
come up for detailed treatment in the discussion of the 
educational function of the family (chap. vi.). 

Children as Property. — "Desire for offspring," says 

"» Smithsonian Report, 1888, 240. 

»»L. c.,369. 

^^ This statement does not tally exactly with Baegert's observation 
upon the indifference of these people toward their children; the incon- 
gruity serves the better to illustrate the instability of the savage temper 
and the dose of the animal in parental "affection." 

^T In the South Seas (Scribner ed., N. Y., 1896), 38. 



100 Primitive Family and Education 

Westermarck, *4s universal in mankind/* Call it 
instinct for reproduction, or cosmic process, or what 
you will, it marks man no less than the animals. And 
in spite of such apparent negations as onanism, abor- 
tion, infanticide, the general rule subsists. Almost 
without exception among primitive men fertility is 
looked upon as a blessing, sometimes as a gift of the 
gods, and sterility as a curse or mark of divine dis- 
favor. Perhaps the reasons are not far to seek. An- 
cestor worship requires, for the peace and happiness of 
both the living and their dead, that the thread of 
generation be unbroken. ^^ But a simpler and far 
more fundamental reason seems to lie in the offspring's 
value as a food-getter. To the savage, living most of 
his lifetime close to the lower subsistence margin, and 
in spite of his usual carelessness about the morrow, old 
age must sometimes have loomed full of doubt and 
terror; his children would serve to splice out his own 
frayed strength in the fight against inhospitable nature. 
Crantz, for instance, records of the Greenlanders that 
it was "a great reproach to have no children, especially 
no son who might be the stay of their old age. '* ^^ 
But many times before old age came on, primitive 

**An overflowing bibliography exists on this point; suffice it to 
mention Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite Antique, 2d ed., chap, ii.; Starcke, 
Lafamille dans les differentes societes, 197; Nelson, in Bur. Ethn., xviii., 
364; Spiegel, Erdnische Alter thumskunde, ii., 98; Smith, Chinese Charac- 
teristics, 184; Jolly, Les Secondes Mariages, 11 ; Steinmetz, Ethnol. 
Sttcdien, i., 287-96; the Chinese philosopher Mencius said: "There are 
three things which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest 
of them. " 

^9 L. c, i., 159; cf. the Chinese proverbs: "Trees are raised for shade, 
children are reared for old age"; "If you have no children to foul the 
bed, you will have no one to bum paper at the grave. " 



Parental and Filial Relations loi 

men found use for children. They cost but little to 
maintain while young, and early attain self-support; 
may easily be abandoned, eaten, or sold in times of need, 
famine, war, migration, etc. Very early they can be 
put to service about the house, in the fields, with the 
flocks. The boy soon learns to fish, paddle, hunt; 
and the girl to tend the fire, carry wood, water, etc. 
She, too, will command a price when marriageable. 
In some cases, indeed, children formed the chief wealth 
of the family. The labor problem was no less acute in 
the dawn of civilization than in our own times. Even 
nowadays children are regarded by many parents in 
America and elsewhere as financial assets and treated as 
such. It appears that English child-labor laws, which 
hinder the child from being any longer the ** parental 
savings-bank,'* are partly responsible for the declining 
birth-rate. One need not go far from home to hear 
some parent exclaim to a teacher or factory inspector: 
"My child is my own; I can do as I please with him; 
I need his help; he can work for me if I want him to, " 
etc., etc. But the primitive parent had no child-labor 
laws to contend with, and no coherent ideas of the 
state, or of state interference; whoever the owner of 
the child, whether father, mother, or the group, ^^ 
the child was property, valuable property, and usable 
property.''^ Whether he was 3. person first, and only 
through pressure of untoward circumstances came to 

*° See Lippert, il., 3; Mucke, Horde und Familie, 159; Gomme, xvii. 
J. A. I., 120. 

" Perhaps not always the most valued possession, for Pratt {Two 
Years among New Guinea Cannibals, 330) writes, ("the child is not at 
all hardly used — although, be it remembered, the family pig has a 
deeper place in the adult's affection"! 



102 Primitive Family and Education 

be regarded as a thingy perhaps we cannot say, since 
the savage's sense of personality is so obscure. But 
there is no doubt that he was a thing, an asset, a re- 
source, a marketable good. Paulitschke says of the 
Northeast Africans: 

"The children of a married pair are, according to the 
ideas of the Northeast Africans, considered as scarcely 
higher than things. They are the property of the father, 
for whom they must work, from whom they must buy 
themselves off, who can sell them, and from whom they 
must be purchased. The father has no obligations towards 
them, not even for the maintenance of their lives if they 
are at all able to support themselves {das physische Leben 
selhst zufristen). Thus their labor power belongs to the 
father until the moment they leave the family and become 
themselves heads of families. "^^ 

In some Kafir tribes "the people pray for many boys 
and but few girls, for if their prayers are answered they 
will be able to sell their daughters for sufficient cattle to 
make them rich, while their sons will settle down near the 
father's hut, and so make him a head man of great impor- 
tance. In other tribes the people pray for a few boys and 
many girls, preferring the greatness that comes from 

*' Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, i., 189; cf. Wuttke, Geschichte des 
Heidenthums, i., 185: "Das Kind ist eben auch nur ein lebendiges 
Einzelwesen, hat nicht ein Recht fur sich, sondern ist rein ein Besitzthum 
der Eltern, mit welchem sie machen konnen was sie wollen gegen welches 
sie keinepflicht haben," etc. — a generalization which has stood half a 
century; cf. also Post, Familienrechts, etc., 332. In Rome, when the 
patria potestas began to weaken, and protective legislation for children 
was developed, it is notable that the protection was designed not 
primarily for the child himself, but for his inheritable possessions. 
Only with the entrance of Greek philosophy came the idea of protecting 
his person as such. See Gastambide, U enfant devant lafamille et Vetat, 
p. X., etc. 



Parental and Filial Relations 103 

riches to that which comes from possessing a large kraal. 
Thus the people do not introduce any sentimental motives 
into the problem, merely regarding the children as a poten- 
tial asset. '*^^ 

David Livingstone observed that the Bechuanas were 
much attached to their children, and suggests as the reason 
that "every little stranger forms an increase of property to 
the whole community."^'* From another corner of Africa 
comes the report that "great store is set upon children, 
and the more children a woman has the more valuable 
she is."^^ The Yakuts are perfectly frank and business- 
like in this matter. They say : 

"It is more advantageous for us Yakuts, in this frozen 
country of ours, to have many children than to have much 
money and cattle. Children are our capital, if they are 
good. It is hard to get good labourers, even for large 
wages, but a son, when he grows up, is a labourer who 
costs nothing.'"'^ 

The Bontoc Igorots are no less canny; they love all their 
children and say when a boy is born, "It is good"; and if 
it be a girl it is equally "good." It is the fact of a child 
in the family that makes them happy, says Jenks. For, 
and here is the secret, "One is as capable as the other 
at earning a living, and both are needed in the group. "^^ 
The Igorots, be it remembered, are agriculturists, rather on 
the intensive plan ; " hands " therefore are always in demand. 

The mysterious occult sensibilities of children, and 
their apparent prophetic capacity, were not neglected 
in savage economics. 

^3 Kidd, Savage Childhood^ 9; cf. Tylor, Anthropology, 365. 
='4 Travels in South Africa, i., 140. 

*s Granville and Roth, "Notes on the Jekrls, Sobos and Ijos," etc., 
xxviii. J. A. I., 106. *^ Sieroshevsky-Sumner, /. c, 77. 

27 Jenks, I. c, 59-60; Vassal, On and Off Duty in Annam, 225. 



104 Primitive Family and Education 

" The California Indians would give children narcotic 
potions, in order to gain from the ensuing visions informa- 
tion about their enemies. . . . The Darien Indians used 
the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to bring on in chil- 
dren prophetic delirium in which they revealed hidden 
treasure."^* 

Mr. Hill Tout found among the Siciatl of British 
Columbia a custom of secluding certain male children 
to develop in them occult powers for the game quest. ^' 
They were kept as veritable Nazarites, shut up by day 
in little "box-like receptacles" like blooded hounds. 
Finally, as will appear in a later paragraph, the savage 
was by no means averse to selling his child into slavery 
or otherwise. On the whole, then, we may conclude 
that the parental affection of savages is not pure cos- 
mic emotion, but a mixture v/ell dosed with worldly 
economy. It is doubtftd if, in primitive society, chil- 
dren are ever valued and regarded for themselves. 

Prehistoric Family Life. — So far the picture of primi- 
tive family life, at least what there was of it, has been 
presented in its most favorable light. We are now to 
examine certain shadows in the picture before coming 
to any final judgment upon it. Dr. Louis Robinson 
attempted an ingenious reconstruction of the very 
primitive family by a process of deduction from cer- 
tain physiological and mental traits of the present-day 

^8 Tylor, P, C, ii., 416-7. 

^^ J. A.I., xxxiv., 25-6. Further references on children as property: 
Mucke, /. c, 292; Fritsch, Die Eingehorenen Siid-Afrika's, 141; Ploss, 
/. c, ii., 342-3; Loskiel, 61; Starcke, Prim. Fam., 261; St. John, Life in 
the Forests of the Far East, i., 165; Mindelefif, "Navaho Houses," Bur. 
Ethn., xvii., pt. ii., 485; Lewis and Clarke, Travels, ii., 164; Bogoras, 
in Am. Anthrop., iii., n. s., 106; Leprince, V Anthropologie, xvi., 61. 



Parental and Filial Relations 105 

infant. ^'^ One need not accept in detail his arguments ; 
but all due allowances made, there still remains a very 
unflattering sketch of the domestic life of our paleo- 
lithic forbears: want, misery, abandonment, neglect, 
jealousy, are its most salient traits. 

"Who would have thought,** says he, "that the fat 
which cushions a baby's body told one of the most tragic 
tales of human suffering which it is possible to imagine? 
Yet this is the opinion to which we are driven by a brief 
examination of the facts, in the light of evolutionary 
law." 

The facts seem to be these: the young of monkeys and 
arboreal man were slight and slim, otherwise their parents 
could not have carried them while leaping and climbing 
among the trees. Unless there had been some preponderant 
advantage to the human infant in being fat he must have 
remained slim when our ancestors became terrestrial and 
wandered about, for the wanderer scales down his burden 
to the lightest. What determined fatness against leanness? 
Apparently the irregularity of food supply. 

"Although primitive man did not hybemate, and was 
probably versatile enough to find food in all seasons of the 
year, he was like all modern savages who live by the chase, 
liable to frequently recurring famines. ^^ If game was 
plentiful the tribe revelled in abundance; but when the 
hunters were unsuccessful, roots and skin clothing were 
the chief articles in the menu. Now it is obvious that 
infantile gums would make but poor play with such tough 
diet; and at the same time the baby at the breast would 
find its usual nutriment almost entirely cut off. In order 

30 North Amer. Rev., cllx., 467-78. 

3* For a somewhat contradictory view, see Richard Semon, In the 
Austral. Bush, 217-8. 



io6 Primitive Family and Education 

to tide over these periods of scarcity it was therefore 
necessary that the primitive child should imitate the 
provident habits of the bear and the dormouse. By waxing 
fat in times of plenty, he was able to fall back on his own 
resources during 'the winter of his discontent,' when his 
parents were unable, or unwilling, to provide him with 
food." 

Under such circumstances (and they have lasted from the 
tertiary period to present-day savagery), mortality of the 
young and weak from starvation is enormous. The sur- 
vival of fat infants and the change in the infant type 
have been 

** brought about by the constant elimination, by means of 
death from want, of thousands upon thousands of infants 
of the primitive simian type. In fact only those children 
who varied in the direction which the conditions of a pre- 
carious savage life rendered necessary^survived and left 
offspring." 

One might raise the question whether the child but 
shared the common misery, and whether after all he did 
not receive his due attention in the matter of food and care. 
Dr. Robinson thinks the "universal tendency exhibited by 
infants to pick up small objects of all kinds and put them 
in their mouths" is a survival of cave-dweller times, when 
the infant, left largely to his own devices, crawled about 
among the refuse of the cave floor or crept after his mother 
through the grass experimenting " gastronomically with 
grubs, caterpillars, and other small deer." The persistent 
jealousy displayed by so many little children also may be 
traceable to primeval hard times when each had to seize 
the biggest possible share in the spoils. "If the morsel 
chanced to be the last obtainable when a prolonged fast 
was impending, a selfish and jealous child might, by secur- 
ing a double portion, hold out while others perished. " But 
the wiles of propitiation were resorted to where mere 



Parental and Filial Relations 107 

brute strength and selfishness seemed unHkely to win 
out. 

"Most babies, before they can talk, will ostentatiously 
offer their nurses or parents a share of their food at the 
very time when they show the greatest repugnance to giving 
any to other children. Obviously the primitive child 
learned by sad experience that, in dealing with adults, 
a policy of conciliation and reciprocity paid better in the 
long run than one of brutal acquisitiveness." ^^ 

Again, the infant's remarkable capacity for crying may 
be interpreted largely as a device for prodding, stimulating, 
coercing, neglectful and indifferent parenthood. The 
primitive child had no other means of securing parental 
attention to his necessities ; the *' infant crying in the night ' ' 
offered one of those irritants to primitive memory, the 
need of which we spoke of in a preceding section. The 
modern infant's cr5ring to no apparent purpose is perhaps 
a survival from times when the purpose was very well 
defined. "That any baby can squall for many hours at 
a stretch sufficiently loudly to make itself heard over a 
considerable area is a fact which is extremely difficult to 
explain in a manner favorable to the domestic reputation 
of early man."^^ 

32 It Is possible to make too much of primitive egoism, as pointed out 
on page 15. There is considerable evidence among higher savages of 
parental self-denial for benefit of offspring in times of food-shortage : 
e.g., Eastman, Ind. Boyh., 17; Skeat and Blagden, /. c, i., 528, note; 
Nansen, I. c, 103; Spencer and Gillen, /. c, 51. 

33 There may be a certain play element in Infantile crying, though 
not a very considerable one. "L 'enfant qui crie a sou vent plaisir h. 
crier" (Compayr^, V evolution intellectuelle et morale de V enfant, 31); 
"the howl begun in earnest is often prolonged from playful experimen- 
tation" (Groos, Play of Man, 31). I fail to see In this manifestation 
any more of play than is to be found in teasing. It is much more 
profitable to emphasize the "language" element. It is curious in this 
connection to note that Jean Paul in his Levana omits any reference to 



io8 Primitive Family and Education 

FamUy Ties Temporary. — It is of course quite un- 
fair to apply the measuring rod of the Cave-Dweller to 
the modem savage or barbarian as to his family Hfe, 
or in any other regard. Ethnography must supply the 
materials for a juster and more accurate view of sav- 
age family life. First, then, as to its duration. The 
human suckling period varies enormously from tribe 
to tribe, ranging from six months with the Maynas 
of Ecuador to five years among some Indian tribes of 
Brazil, and even to fifteen years on occasions among 
the Eskimos. ^4 Social considerations, however, rather 
than maternal love, dictate the period. ^^ 

In general the manifestation of parental affection 
is limited to the earliest years of childhood, for there 
is practically no youth in savagery, and babyhood 
touches maturity, with no gradual transitions. 

**One of the first things that strikes a stranger in Africa 
is the wonderful rapidity with which children develop. 
Real childhood is unknown, although manhood is also 

play in his enumeration of the kinds of crying, viz., from injury, from 
sickness, to get something, from fear, loss, and vexation. It is possible, 
as has been suggested, that the primitive child's cries were valuable to 
his entourage as well as to himself, in anticipation of the watch dog! 

34 Ploss, /. c, ii., 167-75; Von Troil, in Pinkerton, i., 660; Proyart, in 
Pinkerton, xvi., 571; Pfoundes, "On Japan," xii. J. A. I., 223; Smithson. 
Rep., 1893, large vol., 724; Austral. Assoc, for Adv. of Sci., 1892, 697; 
Crawley, /. c, chap. xvi. 

3s The number of children in the family must always bear some rela- 
tion to the quantity and quality of their nurture. Sutherland (/. c, i., 
3-5, etc.) goes into this matter quite fully. To correct the current 
impression that savage families are large, see, e.g., Sutherland, i., chap, 
ii., vi.; Jenks, /. c, 59; Loskiel, 61; Macdonald in xix. /. A. I., 267; 
Dawson, ^M5/m/. Aborig.of West Victoria, 39; Pratt, /. c, 302; Johnston, 
Uganda, ii., 721, 748; Wallace, Malay Archipelago, 101-2. 



Parental and Filial Relations 109 

never reached. The little ones are thrown on their own 
resources at such an early period that they quickly learn 
to act for themselves in providing for the passing hour, and 
little more than this is attained in after life."^^ 

The period at which such maturity is attained and the 
parental bond loosed is determined by the culture 
status, which in turn depends upon food conditions, etc. 
Where the forms of food and shelter are supplied for 
the most part directly by wild nature, such as roots, 
seeds, berries, fruits, shellfish, small reptilia, and caves, 
trees, rude huts of bark or boughs, children from seven 
to ten years, and even as soon as they are weaned, 
begin to look out for themselves. ^^ jf they do not 
separate themselves voltmtarily, and cannot be em- 
ployed or sold by their elders, they may literally be 
' ' kicked out of the nest. " Whatever family feeling there 
may have been soon evaporates. Ploss says of the 
Australians: "Um die Kinder bekummert sich zwar 
die Mutter in den ersten Jahren noch etwas, spater 
hort aber jeder familienartige Zusammenhang auf.^^s 
Visitors have mentioned love to children as the only 
more noble feeling of which the Fuegians are capable, 
*'but it disappears as the children grow, and the 

3*5 A. D. Smith, Through Unknown African Countries, 120. 

37 Parsons, The Family, 28; Lippert, i., 61; Lazarus, in Ztscft.f. Volker- 
psych., i.,459; Steinmetz,in Ztscft.f. Socialwiss., i., 62 1,624, 628; St. John, 
The Ainos, ii. J. A. I., 249; Pratt, /. c, 302; Reclus, /. c, 131; Lichten- 
stein. Travels in South Africa, ii., 230; Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 295; Ploss, 
ii., 342, 392; Dowd, Negro Races, 140-3; Swift, Mind in the Making, 62; 
Sutherland, /. c, i., 150; Letoumeau, L'evol. de I'Sduc, 65; Chamberlain, 
The Child and Childhood in Folk Thought, 195; Biicher, Industr. EvoL, 
15; Thurnwald, in Ztscft.f. vergl. Rechtswiss, xxii., 309-64. 

»8 L. c, ii., 334. 



no Primitive Family and Education 

family feeling is very weak."39 The Puris of Brazil 
are perhaps even weaker in this respect. ^^ Among the 
Indians of Guiana, also, family affection soon cools. 4' 
Forbes observed of the Pasumahis in Sumatra: ''Their 
children are lively and amused with little ; but neither 
of their parents trouble themselves much about them 
after they are old enough to run about by them- 
selves. **42 The Pelew Island boy "is early left to 
himself and to commimity life with his companions.** ^s 

"It is the universal custom for the boys of poor people 
[Bahima] when they reach the age of eight or nine, to leave 
their parents and attach themselves to the following of 
some chief or rich man.*' ^^ 

We may safely say, then, that among savages and bar- 
harianSy except where the social organization coincides 
with the familial, as in the case of the patriarchate, the 
relation of parent to child, however marked by affec- 
tion during the first years of childhood, is usually only 
temporary in its nature. This must have profoundly 
affected the educational fimctions of the family, as we 
shall see shortly. 

Parental Indifference and Cruelty. — A disheartening 
amount of evidence exists to show that not only was 
primitive parental affection transitory, but also that it 
frequently was wholly absent. Indifference and neg- 
lect marked only too often the parental attitude. As 
a general rule, where a conflict occurred between the 

35 Ratzel, ii., 677. 40 Lippert, ii., 306. 41 Im Thurn, /. c, 219. 

*^ A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, 195. 
43 Kubary, Die Socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauen, 50 (cited by 
Steinmetz). 44 Johnston, Uganda, ii., 626. 



Parental and Filial Relations iii 

sexual and the parental impulse, the latter succumbed. 
According to Lumholtz, the natives of Queensland 
scarcely recognize paternal duties. ''^ Captain Burrows 
finds that the Pigmies *'have apparently no ties of 
family affection, such as those of mother to son, or 
sister to brother, and seem to be wanting in all social 
qualities, asking nothing more than to be let alone, to 
'live and let live.* "^6 ** There is no family affection — 
which is absolutely non-existent with the Abysinnians 

"The parental affection of the Khuai (African Bushmen) 
for their children is imperfectly developed, for they gener- 
ally abandon them, and leave them to grow up unwatched 
and uncared for. Children cease to be objects of their 
mother's care after they are able to crawl about in the open 
air. Their actions remain unrestrained and unrebuked, and 
it is only in a fit of anger that their parents will, at times, 
subject them to some barbarous or cruel punishment. . . . 
When their supply of provisions begins to fail, or when they 
are pursued by enemies, or when a wife has been abandoned 
by her husband, their children are considered to be a 
burden too heavy to be borne, and to get rid of them they 
will strangle them, smother them, cast them away in the 
desert, or even bury them alive. Instances are even re- 
ported where parents have thrown one of their children 

<s Quoted by Westermarck, /. c, i6i. 

4^ Land of the Pigmies, 182; the same writer (xxviii. J. A. I., 37) says 
of the Black Pigmies: "the affections are almost an unknown quantity 
among them. They have apparently no ties of family affection, such 
as mother to daughter, sister to brother; while anything further removed 
than this is not recognized at all in the light of relationship." Cf, 
Dowd, /. c, 14. 

*7 A. H. S. Landor, Across Widest Africa, i., iii. 



112 Primitive Family and Education 

to the hungry lion that stood at the mouth of their cavern 
home, and refused to depart till his craving hunger was 
satisfied by the sacrifice of some living victim." ^^ 

"The Kavirondo," says Sir Harry Johnston, "are in- 
ordinately fond of their cattle, and a chief will frequently 
bemoan the loss of one of his cows with more genuine and 
heartfelt grief than he wotdd display if he lost a wife or 
a child." The same writer notes of the Masai: "Little 
boys . . . are soon put to work at herding cattle and mak- 
ing themselves generally useful. They are lean, lank little 
shrimps at this stage, and receive a large share of cuffs 
and kicks, and not over much food."^^ Richard Burton 
found in central and eastern Africa that 

"Husband, wife, and children have through life divided 
interests, and live together with scant appearance of affec- 
tion. Love of offspring can have but little power among 
a people who have no preventive for illegitimacy, and 
whose progeny may be sold at any time. The children 
appear undemonstrative and unaffectionate, as those of the 
Somal."^° Among the Chukchi of Northeastern Asia boys 
are early put to hard work, with bad and scanty food. 5' 
Spix and Martins say that among the Brazilian tribes the 
father has scarcely any, the mother only an instinctive 
affection, for the child. ^^ Von Martins, speaking of the 
Macusis of Rio Branco, says there is never any sign of 
kissing or fondling the child, and that its father is at any 
time in a position to sell it to some childless couple; "the 

48 Featherman, i., 532-3. Perhaps the lion episode is apocryphal! 
But see a somewhat similar case in a later paragraph. 

49 Uganda, ii., 742, 827; cf. von Martius, Beitrdge, i., 261, note: 
among the Candeiros of Brazil dogs were often given the preference 
over children in matters of food and drink. 

5° Lake Regions of Central Africa, 494. 

s' Bogoras, m Am. Anthrop., iii., n. s., 106. 

s^ Quoted by Lubbock, Preh. Times, 558. 



Parental and Filial Relations 113 

price is the same that the Indian asks for his dog." Else- 
where he notes that not seldom children die of starvation 
or from other forms of inhuman neglect. ^^ Kubu parents 
are said to be strikingly indifferent to their children. ^^ 

Among the Oregon Indians, 

"mothers, it is true, show a certain degree of affection to- 
ward their children; but even this is subject to exceptions, 
or rather is itself an exception. . . . Men have a certain 
pride of offspring, but it is rather as an evidence of virility 
on their own part than arising from parental care."ss 

Of the Lower Calif ornians, Baegert wrote: 

"I cannot say that the Calif ornian wonien are too fond 
of their children, and some of them may even consider 
the loss of one as a relief from a burden, especially if they 
have already some small children. I did not see many 
Californian mothers who caressed their children much 
while they lived, or tore their hair when they died, although 
a kind of dry weeping was not wanting on such occasions. 
The father is still more insensible, and does not even look 
at his (or at least his wife's) child as long as it is small and 
helpless." And elsewhere, "a little child that has lost 
its mother or both parents is also occasionally in danger 
of starving to death, the father being sometimes inhuman 
enough to abandon his offspring to its fate."^^ 

There is no word for love in the Papuan tongue. " I know 
of no animal save the duck," says Abel, "which is more 

53 Beitrdge zur Ethnographie, etc., i., 125, 643, 644. 

54 Steinmetz, in Ztscft. f. Socialwiss., {., 621; Volz's observations 
(Archiv f. Anthropologies xxxv., 105, etc.) modify somewhat this state- 
ment. 

ss Gibbs," Tribes of West. Wash, and N.W. Oregon," Contrib. to Am. 
Ethnol., i., 198. s6 Baegert, /. c, 368-9, 363. 



114 Primitive Family and Education 

careless in attending to its young than the average 
Papuan mother. How many of them survive infancy and 
early childhood is a marvel. "^^ Certain of the Fijians 
seem equally indifferent: "When at Lakemba I was 
told by Mosese Vakaloloma that, in their heathen state, 
they did not address their little ones as children, but 
would say, "Come here, you rats!"^^ A German voyager 
declares that among the Eskimo of the far northeast, 
"Die Kleinen wachsen auf wie die Schosshunde."^^ We 
have already noted the strong biologic attachment of the 
Greenlanders for their offspring; yet Crantz could say 
that "many boys are neglected in their youth, because 
the equipping them with a kajak and its appurtenances 
is expensive; but still more poor objects of the female sex 
perish with nakedness and hunger."^® The Maoris at the 
opposite end of the world manifest little tenderness for 
their children; similarly the natives of Ruck Island. ^^ 
Of the Alfuren on Cerain Island Ploss writes that for the 
first few months after a child's birth, the father pays 
little or no attention to it; he scarcely sees it; he is in no 
hurry to accustom himself to the luxury of having off- 
spring; with the result that many infants die in their 
first few months. The same writer speaks of the "em- 
porende Lieblosigkeit der Eltern gegen ihre Kinder" which 
the explorer Ascherson found in the Faraf rah Oasis in the 
Libyan Desert. ^^ 

Instances of giving children away have been ob- 
served, notably among the Point Barrow Eskimo, and 
the Yakuts. There exist, too, cases of shocking cruelty. 
Several writers speak of Fuegians killing their children 

57 Savage Life in New Guinea , 42; cf. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, 
589. s 8 "Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 140. 

S9 Bessel, cited by Ploss, ii., 339. ^° L. c, i., 192. 
<*» Ploss, ii., 335-6. <*^ Ibid., i., 61 ; ii., 344. 



Parental and Filial Relations 115 

for trifling accidents. Dibble relates how a Sandwich 
Island father broke his child's back to spite his wife; 
she retaliated by doing the same to the father's favorite 
child/ 3 In an Eskimo legend a mother who was hid- 
ing from bears, and *'who was afraid she would be 
discovered, strangled her child which was going to be- 
gin to cry." ^4 Lay land writes of a mountain tribe of 
South Africa which in times past was in the habit of 
placing children in their lion-traps, in order that their 
cries might attract the animals; this htrnian bait often 
perished horribly. ^^ Qf the deliberate sacrifice of chil- 
dren we shall say but little; except that such sacrifices 
are still made, it is said, among the Ibibios of West Africa 
''at the funeral rites of their kings, when a new market 
is opened or the trade of a market needs improving 
. . . also at the performance of a religious play called 
Airon."^^ Formerly such ceremonies were very com- 
mon throughout the Orient. The Krus of the African 
Gold Coast typify another line of cases. They are said 
to throw pepper in their children's eyes, or to stand 
them in baskets swarming with vicious red ants until 
they are frightfully bitten. ^^ Such cases are perhaps 
referable rather to savage notions of discipline than to 
specific cruelty, yet they reveal a decided obtuseness in 
feeling. Further instances of this type will appear in 
the discussion of savage pedagogy, "endurance tests," 
etc. 



^3 Hist, of Sandwich Islands, cited by Sumner in a Ms. note. 
^^ Rasmussen, /. c, 112. rj'^ J. A. I., i. , 79. 

^^ Marriott, xxix. J. A. I., 24; cf. Ling Roth, Nat. of Sarawak, ii., 215; 
Giglioli, Intern. Archiv f. Ethnographic, vi., 123. 
67 Ploss, ii., 343. 



ii6 Primitive Family and Education 

Children Sold. — The matter of the sale of children 
merits considerable detail. The ancient Hebrew 
father could sell or pawn his own child to relieve his 
own distress. ^^ Pre-Christian Scandinavian law re- 
stricted the sale of children to times of famine. ^^ jn 
ancient China both wives and children could be sold ; 
and Smith says this practice was not confined to years 
of peculiar distress. 7« In Greece sale of children was 
widespread and not forbidden by law till Solon^s time. 
In Thebes exposure was strictly forbidden, but sale 
permitted in cases of extreme poverty. The Roman 
patria potestas invested the paterfamilias with absolute 
power over his children, including right of sale and 
death. In the Avesta, murders are sometimes com- 
pensated for by the offer of yoimg girls. ^^ But these 
customs were by no means confined to antiquity. We 
are told that the majority of Africans will sell their own 
offspring for a good price with much less reluctance than 
an Englishman would part with his dog. ^^ Letotuneau 
adds his own picturesque touch: "dans presque toute 
I'Afrique, vendre son enfant, sa chose, n'est pas meme 

<>* Ewald, Antiq. of Israel, transl. Solly, 190. 

^' Lippert, i., 223, after Grimm. 

70 Smith, Chinese Characteristics, 204; newspaper notices of Dec. 20, 
1910, state that owing to dire famine in parts of China, sale of children 
is widespread; the figures quoted (1,000,000) are manifestly absurd. 
See Johnston's conservative statement, Lion and Dragon, 169, note. 

7'Schrader, Preh. Antiq., 390, 402; on Patria Potestas, see Lecky, 
Hist, of European Morals, i., 298; Beauvallet, Etude historique sur la 
patria potestas; Saumade, Hist, de la puissance paternelle sur la personne 
de V enfant; Rampal, De la condition deV enfant dans le droit public ancien 
et moderne. For a modern African example of patria potestas^ see 
Garbutt's "Study of the Nyasa," in Man, Mar., 1912, p. 39. 

7' Duncan, Travels in West Africa (London, 1847), i., 262. 



Parental and Filial Relations 117 

une peccadille; c'est un droit. "^^ Graf von Gotzen 
says that in Ruanda his men were continually offered 
children for sale. ^ 4 But among the Orloikobs of the 
East Coast of Africa the father seems to have had the 
right to sell his child only if necessary to procure 
weapons of war or the indispensable necessaries of life. ^ 5 
Natives of Wombasa, on the other hand, are said to 
dispose of their "surplus** by sale into slavery. ^^ 
St. John states that children were sold into slavery by 
dozens in Brunei on the Limbang River in Borneo. '^^ 
Von Martius found that Botocudo fathers, "tempted, 
by a happy bargain, not infrequently sold their minor 
children to the Brazilians. *'78 The Macusi of Guiana 
can sell his offspring "if he wishes.*' ^ 9 The Shasta 
Indians of California frequently sold them as slaves to 
the Chinooks.^° Sieroshevsky mentions the case of a 
Yakut family who sold their eight-year-old daughter to 
a Russian officer who was passing through their coun- 
try. ^ ^ The imsavory list need not be prolonged. These 
instances should suffice to demonstrate at least that 
parental affection is far from imiversal, and is neither 
an innate, nor a thoroughly acquired characteristic.^^ 

''^Vevol. de Veduc, 81-2; Werner, Brit. Centr. Africa, 147, asserts in 
opposition that "the often made assertion that parents will sell their 
children into slavery has very little foundation, as far as Anyanja and 
Yaos are concerned. This only happens in very exceptional cases." 

74 Durch Afrika von Ost nach West, 191. 

7s Featherman, /. c, i., 701. 

'«H. B. Johnstone, xxxii. J. A. I., 270-1. 

'7L. c, ii., 30, 248. "J^ Beitrdge, i., 322. 

^ 9 Ibid, i., 643-4; Sumner confirms this in a MS. note from Schom- 
burgk's Reisen. *° Bancroft, Native Races, i., 351. ^^ L. c, 76. 

8^ We might add that folklore frequently yields suggestive examples; 
e.g., the Legend of Maui in Sir George Grey's Polynesian Mythology. 



ii8 Primitive Family and Education 

Ignorance of Child Hygiene. — While the claims of 
his developing intelligence gained for the human savage 
child a nurture and a rank immeasurably superior to 
that of his highest animal ancestors, yet it must be ad- 
mitted that his position was far from secure. His 
life among rude nature peoples was subject to many con- 
tingencies. He was both valuable property and a 
troublesome biu*den by turns; now the toy and now 
the food of the family group. When times pressed 
hard, both extremes of the community, the aged and the 
young, were sacrificed to the common need. But even 
in times of safety and plenty a perpetual holocaust 
of child life went on, due to the ignorance and neglect 
of its proper needs. Instead of wondering over the 
low rate of increase among savage peoples, we should 
wonder rather that any of them should have reached 
maturity. That there are any ** survivals" at all of 
primitive peoples is a remarkable testimony to the 
resistant power of the human frame, especially of the 
human stomach! Thus Ploss is inclined to dispute 
Rousseau's famous dictum in the Emile, ^'Tout est 
bien en sortant des mains de I'Auteur des choses, tout 
degenere entre les mains de I'homme. " He assures 
us that savages proceed direct from the Creator's hands 
in the Rousseau sense; hence we should expect to find 
among them the "good " methods of care and nurture of 
the young; but the contrary is true. "Allein die dia- 
tetische Behandlung des Neugeborenen ist keineswegs 
bei alien Naturvolkem musterhaft. " In the matter of 

The widespread practice of adoption in savagery also furnishes con- 
siderable evidence against the firmness of the "natural" bond between 
parents and children; see, e.g., Bucher, Industr. EvoL, 15. 



Parental and Filial Relations 119 

baby food they depart extraordinarily far from what 
the simplest consideration would suggest as proper and 
natural. Neither in the choice of food, in its prepa- 
ration, in its quantity, form or substance, is there any- 
thing corresponding to the demands of rational health 
(Anforderungen der vernunftigen Gesundheitspflege) , 

The Ekoi of southern Nigeria "are devoted parents, but 
it will take years of patient teaching before they grasp 
the importance of fresh air and the simplest sanitary 
measures for the health of their little ones."^^ In old 
Japan, the infant was not allowed the breast for nearly 
three days, and was dosed with a "horrible decoction used 
for staining the teeth, composed of water that had become 
putrid in an old teapot in which were a quantity of old 
rusty nails." ^4 jyian found mortality among Andamanese 
infants ''excessive," and "traceable to no want of affec- 
tion, but to the injudicious treatment and lavish attentions 
bestowed upon the little ones by their ignorant though 
well intentioned elders. "^^ Masaba parents "are quite 
careless about their children smoking [Indian hemp] : for are 
not the children themselves responsible for their habits? "^^ 
Children of the Nagas "when they are hardly able to tod- 
dle are thorough-paced tobacco-smokers. "^^ The Bush- 
women "begin from the very beginning to feed them with 
roots and meat which they chew for them. They are 
taught to chew tobacco very young, and have scarcely any 

83 Talbot, Nat. Geographic Mag., xxiii., 33. 

84 Pfoundes, xii. J. A. I., 223. 

^^J. A. I., xii, 329. In a note he adds, " Dr. Day has correctly stated 
that 'men and women seem equally fond of carrying the babies about; 
all pet them; when they cry for anything, they give it; and over-kindness 
early consigns the little one to the grave. " Killed by kindness! 

86 Purvis, I. c, 337. 87 Furness, xxxii. J. A. I., 456. 



120 Primitive Family and Education 

human protection or attention whatever. "^^ Assinaboin 
Indians permitted their children to share in their drunken 
excesses.^' Tibetan infants are fed on parched meal mixed 
with soup, the greater part of them getting no milk what- 
ever.'** Indeed even among tribes v/here milk is plentiful 
it often fails to figure in children's diet. The prolonged 
suckling of children is often cited as a mark of singular 
maternal care and affection; but there is a fly in the honey 
even here, for, as in Greenland where foodstuffs are rude 
and scanty, the extended mother-milk diet unfits the 
child for an abrupt transition to normal food. Hence 
should the mother die, or bear another infant, there is 
little hope of the older child's survival. '^ 

The "hardening" processes through which savage 
children are often put are no less unhygienic than their 
food. The Fuegians plunge the newborn infant into 
the sea; the Yakuts into the snow. The Tibetans 
expose it to the sun's rays for several days; the Bed- 
ouins do likewise. An old voyager to the Congo noted 
that children were always *'kept naked upon the 
ground, to the end that they may thereby grow hardy 
and active. "5>* 

" Yakut children are often suckled at night to keep them 
quiet, but in the daytime they lie cold, damp, and neglected, 
while their uproar fills the house. . . . Some mothers em- 
ploy a means of putting their children to sleep, especially if 
they are fretful boys, which often causes spermatorrhea."'^ 

Russian children even in the eighteenth century are re- 
ported as "not tenderly nurtured, illy clad even in ex- 

** Ratzel, ii., 268-75. ^' Lewis and Clarke, /. c, i., 254. 

9° Smithson. Rep., 1893, large vol., 724. »' Crantz, /. c, i., 162. 

9» Merolla in Pinkerton, xvi., 237. 
93 Sieroshevsky-Sumner, /. c, 80. 



Parental and Filial Relations 121 

treme cold weather. "^4 The filth in which they are 
often allowed to lie is indescribable. Marchand set 
down in his voyages that among the Thinkeets infants 
were '' so excoriated by fermented filth and so scarred by 
their cradle, that they carry the marks to the grave, "^s 
Igorot babies, at least those that have attained six or 
eight months, are almost without exception very dirty; 
a child of a year or year and a half is usually repul- 
sively so ; its head has received no attention since birth, 
and is scaly and dirty if not actually full of sores. ^^ 
In some parts of China children instead of being pro- 
vided with diapers are clad in a pair of bifurcated bags 
partly filled with sand or earth. Weighted with these 
strange equipments the poor child is at first rooted to 
the spot like Mark Twain's Jumping Frog. In the 
districts where this custom prevails it is common to 
speak of a person who exhibits small practical knowl- 
edge as one who has not yet been taken out of his *^earth 
trousers." 97 Perhaps we might add that the various 
anointings with urine, cow-dung, etc., in vogue in many 
countries have not the virtues assigned to them, to say 
nothing of probable opposite effects. Bathing, too, 
is variously regarded; with some tribes it is a virtue, 
with others a vice; in general it is a sport or a cere- 
monial rather than a hygienic measure; and the infant 
stands or falls according to the local belief and practice. 
Infant Mortality. — In view of such evidence, need we 
wonder that the infant mortality rate among savage 

9* Pinkerton, vi., 708; see also Ploss, ii., 3-9; Reclus, /. c, 51; Nelson, 
Ind. of N. J., 41; Teit, in vol. ii., Amer. Mus. of Nat. Hist. Memoirs, 
^77-^ (Thompson River Indians). 

9^ Smithson. Rep., 1887, pt. ii., 175, note. 

9<* Jenks, /. c, 61. 97 Smith, Chin. Char., 129. 



122 Primitive Family and Education 

peoples is frightfully high? Take even so advanced a 
people as the Igorot : 

" Of fifteen families in Bontoc, '* says Jenks, " each having 
had three or more children, the death rate up to the age of 
puberty was over 60 per cent. According to the Malaguay 
census the death rate of children from 5 to 10 years of age 
is 63.73 per cent."9* 

Captain Burrows found that the death rate among 
Mang-bettou children was very high, and attributed 
it to neglect. ^^ Hartmann found similar conditions 
around the upper Nile.^°° Among the Uganda peas- 
ants Sir Harry Johnston says: ''Infant mortality is 
terrible. It is rare that a peasant woman succeeds in 
rearing more than one child. And among the Kavir- 
ondo, mothers frequently lose all their children. "'"' 
Baegert gives a pathetic picture of the slaughter of 
the innocents among his Calif omians: 

"It is certain that many of the women are barren, and 
that a great number of them bear not more than one 
child. Only a few out of one or two hundred bring forth 
eight or ten times, and if such is the case, it happens very 
seldom that one or two of the children arrive at mature 
age. I baptized, in succession, seven children of a young 
woman, yet I had to bury them all before one of them 
had reached its third year, and when I was about to leave 
the country, I recommended to the woman to dig a grave 
for the eighth child, with which she was pregnant at the 
time."'°^ 

58 Jenks, /. c, 45. " Land of the Pigmies, 86. '"•' Ploss, ii., 7. 
i"L, c, ii., 721, 748. ^"L. c, 368. ' 



Parental and Filial Relations 123 

The Yakut record is scarcely less distressing. Siero- 
shevsky cites the case of a woman married at twenty, 
who bore nine children, of whom seven died in child- 
hood, one was bom dead, and one daughter grew up. 
Another had nine, all of whom died ; another eight and 
lost them all. Another out of ten brought up two; 
another five out of twenty; another seven out of nine- 
teen, and another only one out of six; exceptional was 
the woman who out of five reared all.^°^ Probably 
these figures could be matched almost at random 
among savage and barbarous peoples, but it has always 
proved extremely difficult to collect child-mortality 
statistics among them, largely on account of their 
feeble memorial powers in this particular.^** 4 Indeed, 
infant mortality assumes such proportions among 
primitive peoples, and even those higher in the scale, 
that special malevolent demons are conceived as carry- 
ing off and destroying children. Such a belief occurs, 
for example, in ancient Judea, in Persia, among the 
Yoruba-speaking peoples of Africa, in South Russia, 
and Bohemia. '^s Mr. Zangwilfs stories of contempor- 

"3 sieroshevsky-Sumner, /. c, 79; cj. for Nicobar Islanders, Svo- 
boda, Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr., v., 192; Kubus, see Volz, Archiv f. 
Anthropologies xxxv., 98; Zunis, ten Kate, ZtschfL f. Ethnol. xxi., 667; 
Malay Archipelago, Kohlbrugge, Ztschft. f. Ethnol., xxxii., 397; China, 
Smith, Chinese Characteristics, 129; Ross, in Am. Jour. Sociology, 
May, 191 1 ; Annamese, Vassal, On and Off Duty in Annatn, 224-5; 
North India, Landor, In the Forbidden Land, i., 27; New Guinea, Posch, 
" Rassenhygienische u. Arztliche Beobachtungen aus Neu-Guinea," 
Archiv f. Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, v., 46-66. 

^°4 See ante, pp. 10, 91-3. 

^° 5 Jewish Quarterly, Oct., 1889; Wintemitz, "Das Kind bei den 
Juden", Am Ur-Quell, ii., (1891), pp. 5-7, 34-6; Ellis, Yoruha-Speaking 
Peoples, 111-12; Krauss, Volksglauhe u. Religioser Brauch der Sudslaven^ 
98. 



124 Primitive Family and Education 

ary Jewish life in London tell of amulets hung above the 
beds of mothers in childbirth to fend off Lilith who 
makes away with infants. We shall have to concede, 
in view of the evidence here presented, that certainly in 
primitive times^ and perhaps as surely nowadays, the 
mere fact of parenthood brings with it neither intellect, 
knowledge, nor special capacity. It does bring, usually, 
an emotional interest which may or may not be coined into 
sober sense for the offspring's benefit. In fine, the in- 
telligent care of children is a social product, nay, the index 
of social development, and its veryfiower. 

Children Eaten. — The ''natural'* decimation wrought 
upon savage childhood through ignorance and neglect 
of the merest rudiments of hygiene, enormous as it 
was, tells only half of the story. Man in all ages has 
co-operated with nature and added to the harvest of 
death. Whatever the notions which prompted them, 
whether ideas of cannibalism, or sacrifice, or population- 
check, the various forms of infanticide have been well- 
nigh universal. Abortion we can dismiss at once as a 
restraining device, a rule-of-thumb Malthusianism, in 
default of deliberate moral self-restraint, and of little 
effect upon the parental relation. ^**^ Cannibalism 
practiced upon children, once no doubt pretty wide- 
spread, is now fortunately minimized, and resorted to 
usually only imder stress of famine. Cases are reported 
from the Polar North, from Australia, Fiji, Borneo, and 
Africa. Professor Boas says of the Central Eskimo : 

"The dogs are the first to fall victims to the pressing 
hunger, and if the worst comes cannibalism is resorted to. 

"^ For discussions of this topic, see Archiv f. Anthropol., v., 451 ff.; 
Sutherland, i., 137, etc. 



Parental and Filial Relations 125 

But all these cases are spoken of with the utmost horror. 
In such cases children particularly are killed and eaten. 
Fortunately, however, such occurrences are very rare."^*'^ 

In hard summers the newborn children were all eaten 
by the Kaura tribe in the neighborhood of Adelaide. ^''^ 
Among the Luritchas, another Australian tribe, "a 
healthy child may be killed for the purpose of feeding 
a weaker and elder one. " ^**9 Williams saw "the grey- 
headed and children of both sexes devoted to the oven** 
in Fiji.^'° Certain Borneo tribes are reported as eat- 
ing children within fairly recent times. ''It is like- 
wise said, but we do not know it for a truth, that when 
they give their yearly feast (makantaun) a man will 
borrow a plump child, for eating, from his neighbor, 
and repay in kind with a child of his own, when 
wanted.""^ /But an incident out of the exciting 
adventures of Captain Burrows in Africa will best illus- 
trate present-day cannibalism, and at the same time 
serve as an index of the general cheapness of child life 
in savage thought. 

" While I was conducting a punitive expedition against 
the Maboda (Congo River), I saw a boy hit in the shoulder 
by a bullet from one of the muzzle-loading guns that are 
used by the natives. . . . Looking supremely unconcerned 
and apathetic about the whole affair, he was carried to one 
side by the men nearest to him. I called the men up and 

"7 Bur. Ethn., vi., 574. "« Howitt, N. T. of S. E. A., 749. 

^09 Spencer and Gillen, N. T. of C. A., 608; Smith, Chinese Character- 
istics, 178, speaks of the Chinese practice of serving sick parents with 
cooked portions of their children's flesh — a heroic remedy of fabulous 
efficacy! "°L. c, 165. 

"^ Ling Roth, Nat. of Sarawak, ii., 220; the uncertainty probably 
refers only to the occasion prompting the practice. 



126 Primitive Family and Education 

told them off to take him up to the camp where the other 
wounded were lying. They objected that he was only 
a boy and it did not matter. I rated them for their in- 
subordination and saw my order carried through. But 
for some time afterwards the men continued to grumble, 
saying I might just as well let them have the boy for 
killing when the work of the fight was done. The boy 
recovered, and remained with me for a considerable time; 
but the two men, as well as many of the others who had 
heard of the circumstance, were highly disgusted with me, 
and laboured long under a sense of having been the victims 
of gross injustice."^ ^^ 

Abnormal Infanticide. — The weak, deformed, or 
otherwise unfit child almost invariably succumbed in 
primitive social selection. In West Africa, for instance, 
deformed children have no legal existence; they are 
not considered human; moreover, they are not buried 
nor destroyed, but merely thrown away."^ Among 
the Hottentots, Zulus, some American Indians, in 
ancient Iceland, and in classical antiquity, the imfit 
were usually exposed to die."^ Twins were quite 
generally considered as monstrosities and so treated. 
If spared, usually some rather elaborate propitiatory 
ceremonies were deemed necessary. Sometimes only 
one, but often both, and the mother as well, were killed ; 

"'Land of the Pigmies, 154; cf. Bennett, in xxix. J. A. /., 84; see 
Lippert, ii., 284, 289-91, for discussion of certain phases of child- 
cannibalism. For proof of child cannibalism from prehistoric archae- 
ology, see Joly, Man before Metals, 341-2. 

"3 Miss Kingsley, W. A. S., 148-9; the reverse is true among Ba- 
Yaka of Congo Free State (xxxvi. J. A. I., 51). 

"4Ratzel, ii., 291, 436; Mooney, Bur, Ethn. Bulletin 30, 266; Du 
Chaillu, Viking Age, ii., 40; Schrader, Preh. Antig., 390. 



Parental and Filial Relations 127 

and sometimes a slave, as an extra measure to avert 
the evil influence which had produced them. Stiffice it 
to mention that typical cases occur in many parts of 
Africa, in Australia, Southern India, Peru, and among 
North American Indians. "^ 

Normal Infanticide. — But apart from such apparent 
abnormalities, infanticide must be considered in its 
normal operation. It is difficult to make any univer- 
sally valid generalizations on this subject. We are 
probably safe in asserting that in general the newborn 
infant was not regarded as an individual, as a person, 
until he had at least received some portion of his 
mother's personality in the shape of nourishment."^ 
In some cases he acquired personality only with his 
name. In any event the age at which a child could be 
killed or suffered to perish without offense to the public 
conscience has been gradually reduced; so that imder 
the influence of Christian theology the foetus and even 
the conceptual cell were invested with inviolability. 
It is notorious that in historic times fathers had the 
right to decide whether the newborn babe should live 
or not. Old German, Slavic, and Scandinavian laws 
are explicit in this regard, and Roman and Hindu 
practice was similar; in numerous savage tribes it is 

"spioss, ii., 265-75; Kidd, /. c, 45-9; Nassau, FeticUsm in West 
Africa^ ii; Spencer and Gillen, N. T. of C. A., 609; Thurston, Ethnogr, 
Notes in S. /., 502-9; Lubbock, Preh. Times, 554-5; Mooney, Bur. Ethn. 
Bulletin 30, 266; Featherman, /. c, 224; Parkinson, xxxvi. J. A. I., 317, 
Cases of sparing twins: Skeat and Blagden, /. c, ii., 24; Roscoe, xxxii. 
J. A. /., 32-5; Seligmann, The Melanesians of Brit. New Guinea, 86; 
Johnston, Uganda, ii., 748, 793, 878. 

"•^ See, e. g., Werner, Brit. Centr. Africa, 103; Piludski, " Schwanger- 
schaft, etc., bei den Einwohnern der Insel Sachalin," in Anthropos, v., 
756-74; Gushing, Primitive Motherhood, 30-1. 



128 Primitive Family and Education 

still the custom to rest the infantas fate upon the father's 
decision. What determines this decision? Well, it is 
usually simply an example in fractions: Will the 
denominator bear increasing ? Will the food-numerator 
bear the added strain? In a nomadic tribe there is 
also the question of transportation. We are dealing 
here really in economics rather than psychology or 
ethics; but not exclusively so, and for that reason we 
can give only half assent to Tylor*s dictum that in- 
fanticide arises from hardness of life rather than from 
hardness of heart. One reason at least will appear 
later. Meanwhile we may refer the whole matter to 
the mores as including at once the economic, psy- 
chological, and ethical causes. Space will not permit 
even the citation of typical cases; details are readily 
accessible, for anthropological literature bristles with 
them. Suffice it to note here that in addition to econo- 
mic motives, whim, personal dislikes, anger, unwilling- 
ness to bother with rearing children, grievance against 
the infant for having caused the mother pain before 
birth, or some religious notion, decreed the infant's 
death. Cases also like the following from Fiji occur: 
**They often adopt orphans, for whom they display far 
more love than for their own offspring.'* Williams 
knew a case where parents arranged to murder their 
own infant to make place for an adopted child. "^ A 
combination of motives sometimes provokes the prac- 
tice, as in Murray Island (Torres Straits) : here after a 
certain nimiber of children had been bom the rest were 
destroyed lest the food supply should become insuffi- 
cient; but regardless of this general principle, if the 

"7 Williams and Calvert, /. c, 142. 



Parental and Filial Relations 129 

children were bom all of one sex, some were destroyed 
from shame, *4t being held proper to have an equal 
number of boys and girls." "* The obvious deduc- 
tion from such facts, and the only deduction pertinent 
to our subject, is that if there be such a thing as a 
''parental instinct," it is frequently outweighed and 
canceled by the impulse to self -maintenance ; and it 
matters little in considering such a supersession of 
parental instinct, whether you derive infanticide from 
hardness of life, or hardness of heart. "^ 

Lack of Filial Sentiment. — We have so far spoken 
mainly of the relation of parent to child. But what of 
the reciprocal relation? Does, for example, what we 

"8 Rev. A. E. Hunt, xxvlii. /. ^. 7., ii. 

^^' General discussions of infanticide: Ploss, ii., 243-64; Post, 
Familienrechts, 332 ff.; Sumner, Folkways, 316 ^.; Lippert, i., 201 ff.; 
Wake, /. C.J 75-6; Wuttke, Gesch. des Heidenthums, i., 185-6; Sutherland, 
/. c, i., chap, ii., vi.; Parsons, The Family, chap. iii. Typical cases: 
Stammler, Ueber die Stellung der Frau im alien Deuischen Recht, 13; 
Schmidt, La Societe civile dans le monde romaine, etc., 56; Boas, Bur. 
Ethn,, vi., 580; Brown, Indian Infanticide, y , 12, no, 121, etc.; Eyre, 
Discoveries in Centr. Australia, ii,, 324; Howitt, S. E. Australians, 
749; Howitt, N. T. of S. E. Austral., 748-50; Lubbock, Preh. Times, 
163, 423, 520; Nelson, Bur. Ethn., xviii., 290; Spencer and Gillen, N. T. of 
C. A., 609; Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 142 ; Thomson, xxxi. /. .4. /., 141 ; 
Hawtrey, xxxi. J. A. I., 295; Johnstone, xxxii. J. A. I., 270-1; Ling 
Roth, Nat. of Sarawak, etc., i., loo-i; "Infanticide unknown in Anda- 
man Islands," Man, xii. /. A. I., 329; Dorsey {Bur. Ethn., in., 268) 
found that Omaha parents had no right to put their children to death ; 
similarly the Ba-Yaka (xxxvi. J. A. I., 45). For brief discussion of 
custom of paternal " taking up " of the infant, see Schrader, Preh. Antiq., 

389- 

A whole crop of Interesting problems is suggested by the fact that an 
excess of downy beard on the face is found with special frequency in 
modem women guilty of infanticide (see Ellis, The Criminal, p. 79). 
Does this indicate a regressive tendency toward the male type and does 
it indicate that the male is "naturally" more indifferent to his children? 



130 Primitive Family and Education 

call filial respect, or piety, exist among primitive 
peoples? Biologically, it is evident that the family in 
some form must have persisted, and it is altogether 
probable that selection has operated to secure a certain 
degree of filial attachment; for the precociously in- 
dependent and over-bold child must have perished. It 
is true also that under the influence of the ancestor-cult, 
and wherever the patriarchal organization prevails, 
filial subordination is highly developed; so much so, 
that in cases like the Chinese, civilization marks time 
and thought atrophies. Cases have been observed 
where filial surpasses parental affection, but they are 
decidedly exceptional. On the whole, the savage child 
is just as self-willed, independent, and disobedient as he 
dare be. Whatever respect and devotion he manifests 
come not from an innate instinct, but rather from a 
sense of his material insufficiency, either in the present 
or in the past ; for often it is merely a glance backward 
to the Golden Age of the mother-breast. Such a feel- 
ing is not confined to children or savages. Slavery 
begets a preference for tutelage over freedom. The per- 
sistence of religious dogmas and hierarchies witnesses 
to the average man's preference for dependence rather 
than religious and ethical self-maintenance. But 
respect for parents and elders had also an anticipatory 
aspect ; it was motivated and strengthened by fear, fear 
of a very particular kind, very real, very lively, and not 
lightly to be disregarded. ''We will do what he says, 
for he will die,'* said a group of West African negroes 
of one of their old men. For, dying, he could become a 
source of permanent annoyance, if not immeasurable in- 
jury to the careless and rebellious. Regard for children, 



Parental and Filial Relations 131 

as we have already seen, was rarely concerned with 
childhood as such; so likewise with old age: age was 
respected, for it meant prudence and skill in solving 
life problems ; but only after long cycles of development 
does age as such command respect. Hence the apparent 
contradiction observed in savage life, where age is 
highly regarded, but old age hated and neglected. And 
no amount of glossing will cover up this antinomy. 
Williams, for example, writes of the Fijians : 

" In the destruction of their decrepit parents, the Fijians 
sometimes plead affection, urging that it is a kindness to 
shorten the miserable period of second childhood. In their 
estimation, the use of a rope instead of the club is a mark 
of love so strong that they wonder when a stronger is 
demanded. In many cases, however, no attempt is made 
to disguise the cruelty of the deed. It is a startling, but 
incontestable fact, that in Fiji there exists a general system 
of parricide, which ranks too, in all respects, as a social 
institution."'"'' 

Only when wisdom comes to be prized above mere 
physical strength does the antagonism cease between 
vigorous youth and an old age unable to "pay its way.'* 
The relation between the living and the dead was even 
more antagonistic, or at least utilitarian rather than 
affectionate.'^' 

^2°L. c, 145; cf. for ancient Germany, Tylor, Anthropology, 411. 

^" We are probably not far from the truth if we say flatly that filial 
piety as we know it is only incidental to primitive life. The emphasis 
is laid on the cult or ritual aspect of sonship. The Fifth Command- 
ment, for instance, the only commandment "with promise," enjoins 
honor to one's parents, but honor in the sense of keeping the soul-cult 
going; furthermore, the reward is explicitly conditional upon the per- 
formance of these cult duties. The bond is purely ritualistic and not 



132 Primitive Family and Education 

"Of all the forms of virtue filial affection is perhaps 
that which appears most rarely in Roman history,*' 
says W. H. Lecky.^''^ We might extend the area of 
this remark to include a large part of savage life, past 
and present. Similiar observations come from Samoa, 
Tahiti, Greenland, from the Yakuts, the Bechuanas, 
the Dengas, the Bororo, etc."^ Of the Brazilians von 
Martius writes: ''Ehrfurcht und Gehorsam sind den 
Kindern f remd. * * ^ ^ ^ Identical is the judgment upon the 
Upper Amazon tribes. ^ "" ^ The Chukchi of Northeastern 
Asia are described as such crude and passionate in- 
dividualists that they resent any authority, even wives 
against husbands, and children against parents. ^''^ 
It is common knowledge that some of the North 
American Indians deliberately inculcated filial in- 
dependence and even disobedience as marks of vigorous 
manhood. But another view of the matter comes out 
in the remark of a Navajo Indian, that he was afraid to 

affectionate. For general discussion of the filial relation, see, e.g., 
Lippert, i., 77, 226-9; Spencer, Prin. of Sociol.^ sec. 317; Wuttke, G. des 
H., i., 186-7; for instances of filial respect: Bancroft, Native Races, {., 
635; Boas, Bur. Ethn., vi., 566; Ellis, Yoruba-Sp. Peoples, 158; Feather- 
man, i., 580; Hutter, "Politische u. Sociale Verhaltnisse bei den Gras- 
landstammen," etc. in 76 Globus, 307; Miss Kingsley, W. A. S., 373; 
Leclerc, in Pop. Sci. Mo., xliv., 6; Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 
256; Lummis, Land of Poco Tiempo, 43; Ratzel, i., 105, ii., 544; Sarasin, 
Die Weddahs, 469; Smith, Chinese Characteristics, 173; Tylor, P. C, ii., 
118; Menard, La vie privee des Anciens, ii., 4; Hoogers, "Theorie et 
pratique de la piet6 filiale chez les Chinois," in Anthropos, v., 1-15, 688- 
702. ^^^Hist. of European Morals, i., 299. 

"3 Ploss, ii., 336, 337, 343; Rasmussen, /. c, 186; Ratzel (Germ, ed.), 
i., 294; von den Steinen, /. c, 503; Thonar, Explorations dans VAmerique 
du Sud, 56; Gibbs, /. c, 198. ^24 Beitrdge, i., 124. 

^^'Spix and Martius, Brasiliens, 1226. 

"^ Bogoras, in Am. Anthrop., iii., n. s., 92. 



Parental and Filial Relations 133 

correct his own boy lest the child should wait for a con- 
venient opportunity and shoot him with an arrow. '""^ 
A similar state of affairs prevailed amongst the 
Delawares, for, says Loskiel, 

" the parents are very careful, not to beat or chastise 
them for any fault, fearing lest the children might remember 
it, and revenge themselves on some future occasion." 
"The Kato Porno treated their parents with a certain 
consideration, that is, they would always divide the last 
morsel of dried salmon with genuine savage thrif tlessness ; 
but as for any active, nurturing tenderness, it did not 
exist, or only very seldom. "^^^ 

Mortlock Island mothers fear to correct their spoiled 
and pampered sons.^^^ jsjot at all unusual is the case 
of the Yakut, who, reproached for his behaviour to his 
mother, said: ''Let her cry; let her go hungry. She 
made me cry more than once, and she begrudged 
me my food. She used to beat me for trifles. "^^*' 
But Captain Burrows tells the most remarkable in- 
stance I have encoimtered of disregard for home or 
parental ties. He offered his pigmy boy liberty and 
the opportunity to return to his own people. To 
the Captain's intense surprise, the boy refused and 

^^7 Bancroft, Nat. Races, i., 514, note. 

^28 Loskiel, /. c, 61-2; Powers, /. c, 153, 178. Similar conditions 
among Caribbeans and Fejir Bedouins: cf. Steinmetz, Das Verhaltnis, 
etc., 629; Fynn, /. c, 148-9, generalizes thus: "Among some wild and 
roving tribes, not only of America but of other lands, either of the 
parents, but especially the mother, may be killed by the son on very 
slight provocation, and the murderer is not seriously molested." I 
have not found sufficient evidence to justify so broad a statement. 

"9 Steinmetz, Ethnol. Stud., ii., 187, after Kubary. 

*3o Sieroshevsky-Sumner, /. c, 78. 



134 Primitive Family and Education 

thought such a proposition indicated that he had given 
offense. To propitiate his master the boy bethought 
himself of an original scheme: 

" I '11 tell you what I '11 do, " he said. *' If you will lend 
me five soldiers, I '11 place two there, and two over there 
(indicating positions), and I '11 go over there with the 
other. Then I '11 call my father and mother into the 
ring, and we will capture them and bring them to you." 

Captain Burrows adds: "I think he was disappointed 
that I did not accept this curious proposition, which 
shed a clear light on his ideas of the fifth command- 
ment. "^^^ It is pretty safe to conclude that the 
filial relation does not come within the domain of '^natural 
ethics i'" and is not an innate characteristic. Like the 
marital and parental relations, it, too, takes on the form 
and color of its social surroundings. 

Savage Obtuseness. — To account, at least in part, 
for these sad lapses in primitive parental and filial 
relations, we must go back once more to our estimate 
of savage mental outfit. There we found the savage 
marked in general by a certain dullness in his sensi- 
bilities. To refresh our minds let us take Mr. Kidd's 
picturesque description of the Kafir's nerves, remem- 
bering that the Kafirs occupy a relatively advanced 
culture status. 

** To Europeans there is something almost incredible in 
the accounts of the dullness of a Kafir's nerves; but there 
is ample evidence as to this dullness. It is quite common 
for a native girl to break a needle deep in the palm of her 
hand. After trying in vain for a few days to extract it, she 

^31 Land of the Pigmies, 189, 191. 



Parental and Filial Relations 135 

allows a white man, or even a native doctor, to slash away 
in the deep tissues. The girl will merely cover her head 
so that her fancy may not run away with her, and lead 
her to imagine that things are worse than they really are. 
She will not wince or show the slightest indication of suffer- 
ing during this most painful operation. Occasionally, 
however, a native is as susceptible to pain as any European, 
and dreads even the pulling out of a tooth; but as a rule 
he is very callous. A Johannesburg doctor told me that 
on one occasion a Kafir came to him to have two teeth 
pulled out. The price was arranged for in advance. When 
the teeth were both out, the Kafir only offered half the 
fee, saying that the doctor did not give him anything like 
enough pain to deserve the whole amount. And just as 
a Kafir is slow in locating pain which is being experienced 
in his own body, so is he slow in imagining what others 
are suffering. A grown-up Kafir told me with great 
amusement, that when he was a small boy his father 
threatened him with a beating if he did something or 
other. The child was puzzled as to whatever a beating 
could be, for though he had often seen his bigger brothers 
being beaten, his imagination was unable to work in 
vacuo, and to reconstruct the experience of another into 
terms of his own sensation. When his father threatened 
him, the child simply laughed at him. ... It took a 
very short time for our young gentleman to extend the 
boundaries of his knowledge." '^^ 

'32 L. c, 64-5; cf. Lippert's observation on the "relative Unempfind- 
lichkeit des Naturmenschen " (/. c, ii., 277-8). If it be objected 
that recent experiments in psychology indicate that there is no essen- 
tial difference between civilized and uncivilized races in their general 
"sensibility," our point is all the clearer, for it is obvious that amongst 
peoples of so-called dull sensibility such categories of sensibility as 
fine parental or filial feeling are undeveloped, there being apparently no 
demand for them. 



136 Primitive Family and Education 

Here it seems we have a key to the savage's neglect of 
his family, and to the lack of filial affection on the part 
of primitive youth. If the savage's "I "-concept 
was so utterly incomplete as to be unable to connect 
pain or discomfort with his own bodily processes, it is 
easy to see how it was at least equally impossible to 
consider ejectively the pains and sufferings of others. 
In other words, an understanding sympathy must rest 
in no small degree on personalizing pain.^^^ It is 
obvious then that a high familial, parental, or filial 
sense could only have developed with a growing sense 
of personality. By whatever degree the modern family 
relation transcends the purely biologic connection of 
parent and offspring, it is due to the taking on of 
meanings derived from the give and take of an ever 
developing societal life. For only from the wider range 
of a more and more intensive and extensive group life 
could be gathered the materials for constructing that 
nobler and richer concept of '* I " and " you " which is the 
basis of adequate family life.^^^ 

^33 Hence Adam Smith's sympathy theory seems to be borne out by 
the process of personality-development, by the "Dialectic of Personal 
Growth." 

^34 It may be further remarked that this inability to "reconstruct the 
experience of another into terms of his own sensation " is not confined to 
savages. One of the subtlest and most widespread temptations to 
persons in authority — public officers, parents, teachers, ethical leaders — 
is the setting of tasks, jobs, "stunts," ideals, which they themselves 
would not or could not carry out, or for which they could develop no 
inclination or interest. This temptation results in an endless variety 
of "busy work," tasks to keep folks "out of mischief," discipline for 
discipline's sake, etc. There is an enormous expenditure of energy 
and enthusiasm in aimless efiEort. And what is perhaps even worse than 
these losses is the loss of confidence and respect for authority. Such 



Parental and Filial Relations 137 

Lack of Forethought or Sense of Sin. — A further 
reason may be assigned for the tenuosity of the prim- 
itive family bond, namely, the tendency to live in the 
moment, which so strongly marks primitive man. His 
life has not emerged completely from its pre-human 
matrix of instinctive and reflex action. His ends and 
aims, his reactions, are immediate, with little or no 
forethought or memory. His Hfe deals largely with 
particulars. He is not given to introspection, to 
weighing, to considering at long range. He drives his 
thoughts tandem rather than abreast; hence there is 
little grouping or comparison, but rather seriality. He 
has then no large body of reference, nor perhaps could 
he use it. What pleases or displeases him at any par- 
ticular instant is dealt with in much the same way that 
we giggle when we are tickled, regardless of dignity 
or received opinion. This accounts in part for the 
apparent contradictions in the savage's treatment of 
his children. He may break his child over his knee for 
a trifling fault, or snuff out its life for the momentary 
annoyance of its crying, and immediately after may 
fondle another with the same impulsiveness. ^ ^ ^ Again, 

abuses of authority are readily perceived and resented by subjects, 
students, children. 

^35 See, e.g., Parkinson, Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr., xiii., 22; he speaks 
of "ein sonderbares Gemisch von falscher Liebe und unmenschlicher 
Grausamkeit," which marks certain New Guinea parents. The 
irrational tendency of primitive men to wreak their vengeance or ill- 
will on whatever or whomever is near by without regard to its con- 
nexion with the injury received must have worked disastrously upon 
child life. This tendency survives in modern lower-class families. The 
following passage from a little volume, Les Enfanis en Prison, by the 
well-known French philanthropists Tomel and Rollet, can be matched 
in the records of any divorce court or Juvenile Court: "Lorsqu'un 



138 Primitive Family and Education 

primitive man had no sense of "sin" in neglecting his 
offspring. His life was still too near the lower margin 
of conscious reflective action to bother much about 
motives or to have remorse ; sin being to him, as Miss 
Kingsley says, only "a very ill-advised act against 
powerful, nasty-tempered spirits." "^^ No doubt, fear 
of what ** They " would say operated to the child's ad- 
vantage among lower peoples, as it does in our own 
midst; perhaps even more powerfully among them, 
because of the other-worldly tinge to the **They." At 
any rate a relation requiring such a whip can hardly 
be said to have attained the higher ranks of virtue. 

Summary. — We shall now attempt to summarize 
very briefly our study of these phases of primitive 
family life, and to draw, if possible, some educational 
conclusion from it. In the first place, it seems clear that 
the marital relation was, to say the least, shifting and 
unstable ; and that while it was based to a considerable 
extent upon common care for common offspring, 
other elements, notably economic, entered into it. 
Furthermore, the marriage relation was not one be- 
tween equals; in nearly every case either one or the 
other of the pair was a nullity or in a state of depend- 
ence : either the husband was subordinated to his wife's 
family, or she to him, or both to the group. In either 
case there was little assurance to the child of that firm 
and orderly background which is essential to coherence 

manage vient a ^tre brusquement rompu, non par la mort, mais par 
rinconduite ou la disparition d'un conjoint, il n'est pas rare que I'enfant 
abandonne porte le poids de la haine vou6e au fugitif ou a la fugitive." 
^36 West African Studies, 159; cf. Ellis, Yoruba-Speaking Peoples, 
293-4. 



Parental and Filial Relations 139 

and continuity in education. Secondly, the relation of 
parent to child was far from stable or enduring. If 
there be such a thing as * 'parental instinct," it is at best 
only a secondary instinct; and I should go so far as to 
say that it is not even a thoroughly acquired character- 
istic. Whatever of distinction and permanence it has 
acquired it owes to a gradual rise in the general level of 
intelligence, which is in turn a social process. The 
hazy ideas of relationship as revealed in primitive 
language, myth, and tradition, and in such customs as 
the couvade, had their appropriate effect in preventing 
a close family life or strict family sense. Sex taboos 
and the separation of children from their families 
obviously removed the center of gravity, educationally 
and otherwise, from within the family circle. Only 
in such exceptional cases as the patriarchate was the 
family a unit economically and educationally; and its 
educational services were relatively unimportant, if 
not actually deleterious to human progress. Finally, it 
is doubtful if the family, as family, could function as 
an effective educational institution, since it lacked at 
least one and often several of the fundamental require- 
ments for sound teaching. Mere parenthood does not 
miraculously bring with it the capacity to rear and 
nurture children. At least it did not in primitive times. 
Savage parents show an astounding ignorance of the 
rudimentary physical needs of childhood. Such gross 
ignorance coupled, as it often was, with indifference, 
cupidity, and downright cruelty, could not and did not 
fail to work havoc upon the life of its youth. Hardness 
of life, hardness of heart, and a certain dullness of 
sensibilities are not calculated to produce much in the 



140 Primitive Family and Education 

way of capable, understanding, sympathetic teaching. 
A final indispensable element in education is an attitude 
of respect and teachableness on the part of the taught ; 
and this attitude is at least inconspicuous in the relations 
of savage childhood to its parents. We are justified, 
I think, in concluding that, on the whole j the primitive 
family was rather biologic and economic than educational 
in its function. 



CHAPTER VI 

AIMS AND CONTENT OF PRIMITIVE EDUCATION 

Savages Have Educational Processes. — Popular 
opinion denies to nature-peoples any serious share in 
the educational development of the race. But those 
writers on education who dismiss offhand the whole 
subject of primitive education as of no value to the 
modem educator would do well to look into it a little 
closer. For neither the evolution of civilization nor 
the history of education is a succession of isolated 
events; each stage shades almost insensibly into the 
next as do the stages in mental development. The 
amoeba holds a germ of Shakespeare and Goethe, and 
challenges attention for that, if for no other reason. 
The struggle for self -maintenance depends more on the 
arts of using what nature provides than on the raw gifts 
themselves. Man plus a tool or a knowledge of 
agriculture wrings out of an unwilling soil more life 
sustenance than his imequipped rival on better ground. 
Human selection becomes, then, a struggle of in- 
telligence, of education. Darwin remarked : 

"Of the high importance of the intellectual faculties 
there can be no doubt, for man mainly owes to them his 
preeminent position in the world. . . . Numbers depend 

141 



142 Primitive Family and Education 

primarily on the means of subsistence, and this, partly on 
the physical nature of the country, but in a much higher 
degree on the arts which are there practiced.' 

But these *'arts which are there practiced" are not 
some mysterious organ with which man is endowed; 
they are modes of action acquired and communicated. 
This process is education, a cumulative and progressive 
function. Wherever such arts exist, there you may be 
sure to find education of some sort or other. It is true 
that if we set up strict analytic categories, and examine 
primitive education under various arbitrary heads, we 
shall find some of the pigeon-holes entirely empty or 
only very slightly filled. Still, incomplete as the sub- 
ject is, much educational material of practical value 
may be extracted from it. The importance of festivals 
and dancing, to say nothing of the whole subject of 
play, is enhanced by an examination of savage methods 
of instruction. One need not adhere strictly to the 
Culture-Epoch theory in modern education to profit by 
its suggestions. 

In the following discussion we have attempted to 
study primitive education under several aspects, viz., 
its Aims, Content, Methods, and Organization. But 
it will soon become apparent how unavoidably the 
several topics overlap, this in simple consequence of 
their lack of differentiation in practice. Perhaps we 
should remind ourselves at the outset that savages are 
educable, not only according to their own systems, but 
also to a considerable extent according to ours. Fur- 
thermore, we are to recognize that savage habits, traits, 

* Descent of Man, i., 153. 



Aims of Primitive Education 143 

customs, and crafts are not, and never have been, innate 
instincts, but are the products of real learning. East- 
man, for instance, writes on behalf of his Indian tribe- 
mates: 

** It seems to be a popular idea that all the characteristic 
skill of the Indian is instinctive and hereditary. This is 
a mistake. All the stoicism and patience of the Indian 
are acquired traits, and continued practice alone makes 
him master of the art of woodcraft."^ 

AIMS 

Habit and Adjustment its Aims. — If we define the 
purpose of education as ' 'fitting for life, ' ' we may say that 
the aims of savage education and modern education 
are identical. But if we add the Aristotelian notion 
that education is for the good life, then it is true that 
modem rises above savage education to just the de- 
gree of this qualification. At its lower extreme, savage 
education touches the nurture methods of the higher 
animals. Indeed, as we have already shown, children 
among certain peoples fare little better, so far as 
education is concerned, than if they were offspring 
of the beasts. Igorot children, for example, are said 
to learn the tribal industries "quite as a young fowl 
learns to scratch and get its food." And Itau Eskimo 
''wachsen auf wie die Schosshunde." But at its best 
the aim of savage education was the formation of a body 
of habits; it was adjustment to present environment, 
actual or imagined, rather than the progressive ad- 

* Indian Boyhood, 52. 



144 Primitive Family and Education 

justment to a changing environment which is the aim 
of modern teaching. The distinction appears best 
when we say that modem education seeks to develop 
flexibility, the conscious ability to vary, to meet new 
situations; in other words, that it tends to shift the 
center of ''selection" from without to within conscious- 
ness. Those moralists and educators who believe that 
the perfect human type is a perfect automatism of 
wonderful range and accuracy, err according to our 
notions, but would have been eminently at home in 
savagery. They neglect the dynamic element, the fact 
that the set of conditions we call the "world" or the 
"environment" is not fixed once for all, but is incon- 
stant, moves, changes, is in perpetual flux, as Heraclitus 
observed. Hence the mere habit of acting will not 
suffice. There must be as well the power of not acting. 
And however small we leave this margin of refusaly it 
must be there; indeed, it is the vital element in the 
whole scheme of adaptation. The most important habit 
of all is the habit of thinking; and this is per se the 
habit of flexibility, of deliberation, of negation of other 
habits. An automatic spring lock is not only valueless, 
but dangerous as well, without the key to imlock it. 
This key is the way of escape, the corrective to fixity, 
the safeguard of life and liberty. Savage instruction 
almost wholly neglected the key, being concerned only 
with habitual response to present conditions and the 
solving of present problems. Yet there must have been 
some element of variation in primitive life, else we 
should still be chipping stone axes and grubbing for 
roots. The variation came not so much from conscious 
teaching, as from exterior forces, war, migration, 



Aims of Primitive Education 145 

exogamy, etc., and in later times, trade and political 
organization. ^ 

Savage Education "Practical." — Savage education 
as habit-forming expressed itself in the twofold aim 
of vocational and moral fitness. Since the emphasis, 
especially in the beginning, lay on the vocational, and 
the moral contained little or no ethical element as 
such, but was concerned only with custom and ritu- 
alistic religion, we might say that savage education was 
practical, limited to the arts of self -maintenance. Re- 
ligion, we repeat, was in aim, content, and method, al- 
most wholly imethical, and applied to wringing a larger 
livelihood from the earth or the unwilling powers that 
controlled it, or to preventing by exorcism and pro- 
pitiation unfriendly powers from cutting off the means 
of life, or life itself. If we say that education is the 
teaching of "values," then primitive man reflected in his 
education his notions of certain crude industrial arts 
and peace with the unseen powers as the things most 
worth while in life. Hence he placed the premium 
upon doing, and belief as an aid to doing, rather than 
upon thinking. Furthermore, his doing focused upon 
the satisfaction of immediate wants. Only when 
higher barbarism is reached do we find much attempt 
to control the future, though it is evident that no prog- 
ress would have been possible without some dis- 
coimting of the present in favor of the future. Yet 
speaking by and large, food, and defense from enemies 
either of this world or more particularly of that terribly 

3 AH this was education. Hence it is not altogether exact to say 
that savage education was "unprogressive," unless education be limited 
to what is termed formal instruction. 
zo 



146 Primitive Family and Education 

real and dangerous other- world, are primitive man's 
first aims in his learning, whether it be imconscious and 
self -acquired or the result of combined self, familial, 
and group instruction. 

"At an age when civilised children would just be com- 
mencing to learn to read books, the savage child is busy, 
though he scarcely knows it himself, in learning to read 
nature, and in acquiring the knowledge which will enable 
him not only to obtain his own supply of food, but to guard 
himself against the attacks of enemies."'* 

From the subordination of the individual to the group, 
it is evident that savage education was designed, es- 
pecially when it became conscious, to secure the soli- 
darity of the group, rather than to convey a body of 
exact knowledge. In general we may say, then, that 
primitive education aimed chiefly, whether consciously or 
not, at securing and developing keen perceptive powers, 
physical endurance, and discipline, ^ 

CONTENT 

Evolution of the Curriculum. — The Curriculum of 
savage education, as already indicated in its Aims, 
includes two general groups of "subjects," vocational 
and moral, the latter including custom, tradition, and 
religion. Yet in practice the two groups are constantly 
associated. Tradition or taboo may rigidly prescribe 

4 Spencer and Gillen, N. T.ofC.A., 37. 

5 Cf. Spencer's essay on Education, 281-2: "... bodily vigour 
with its accompaniment were the desiderata; and their education was 
almost wholly physical; mental cultivation was little cared for," etc.; 
"mental cultivation for its own sake," would have been nearer the 
strict truth. 



Content of Primitive Education 147 

the technique of industry, and religion constantly 
breaks over into the economic regime, not only to deter- 
mine the forms of industry, but even to proscribe and 
interrupt their normal course of operation; as, for ex- 
ample, where mortuary customs require the destruc- 
tion of property or suspension of labor or the lying 
fallow of land. Among the lowest nature-peoples, 
where the range of ideas is narrowest, the arts few and 
simple, social organization the loosest, the curriculum 
reduces to its lowest terms. Yet even here learning is 
not an easy process; for under such conditions each 
generation must go back to the beginning, as there is no 
storing up of capital, of tools, or even of methods. On 
the contrary, the practice of destroying the property 
of the dead left to the survivors the difficult task of 
creating ah ovo their means of production. Only with 
the rise of intelligence, the settlement in a more or less 
permanent abode, the accumulation of property, the 
division of labor, the formation and transmission of 
tradition, and the organization of conscious education, 
could there be any short cut, any recapitulation in brief 
of racial experience. This stage once reached, the 
"course of studies" becomes immediately more varied 
and more precise. The development of trade and 
political organization, together with the increasing 
complexity of social and religious concepts, brings a 
corresponding extension and depth to the content of 
education. Ordeals, drill, initiatory rites, instruction 
in tribal traditions, religious beliefs, laws, and customs, 
begin to occupy the larger part of the curriculum, 
which still includes occasional definite lessons in the 
tribal arts of self -maintenance. But, far from being 



148 Primitive Family and Education 

delivered en bloc by some primitive educational expert, 
their whole system of instruction was developed out of 
the very heart of savagery itself by the slow zigzag 
method of trial and failure in the struggle for existence. 

Classification of Primitive Peoples. — Several attempts 
have been made to classify primitive peoples according 
to their attitude toward education. Steinmetz makes 
a threefold grouping: (i) Those absolutely without 
training of any sort. (2) Those where education is 
beginning, without or almost without discipline. 
(3) Those where hard treatment and strict training 
prevail.^ Such a classification rests obviously on the 
notion of education as formal training closely corre- 
lated with discipline. Another writer uses considera- 
tion of the child's interests as the basis of classification, 
but arrives at substantially the same result: (i) Those 
peoples in which there is no attempt to discipline 
the child for his own sake. (2) Where the child is dis- 
ciplined primarily to make him useful to his parents, 
(3) Where he is educated and provided for primarily /(9r 
his own sake, ^ In neither of these schemes, however, are 
the stages mutually exclusive ; as in the case of types of 
marital organization, so here, the stages overlap, or 
may exist concurrently. Spencer's dictimi^ that 
warlike peoples are strict in training their children, and 
peaceable peoples lax, offers us little help; for such a 
generalization sprang rather from his espousal of a 
favorite antithesis between the military and the in- 
dustrial types of society than from a thorough ex- 

^ Steinmetz, Ztscft.f. Socialwiss., i., 609; id., Ethn. Siudien, ii., 181. 

7 Parsons, The Family, chap. v. 

8 Prin. of Ethics, i., 376; Prin. of Social., ii., 330-2. 



Content of Primitive Education 149 

amination of the facts themselves. We have been 
unable to arrive at any hard and fast classification that 
will hold good in every case. The following scheme, 
however, is offered as a working guide: (i) Cases 
where there is little or absolutely no formal instruction 
or discipline, where whatever is learned is "picked up" 
much after the animal fashion, where the economic, 
political, and familial organization is still loose, and 
where the forces of "selection" are still largely exterior 
and unconscious. (2) Where a developing social organi- 
zation has stretched the range of interest, where a 
reservoir of experience begins to appear and brings with 
it a conscious demand for the preservation and per- 
petuation of this body of experience, and hence the 
beginnings of organized instruction. (3) Where the 
notion of education as a paramoimt selective agency 
holds sway. X The first two classes alone pertain to our 
subject. It will be found that this classification applies 
to both the content and the organization of primitive 
education, and perhaps to its methods and results as 
w^ell. A few typical cases will illustrate this general 
course of development. 

"Soft Pedagogy." — First, then, come the cases in 
which there is neither conscious education nor formu- 
lated discipline. The Lower California Indians per- 
fectly illustrate both points. We have already noted 
their resentment toward discipline. Father Baegert 
is no less explicit as to their neglect of learning. 

" Nothing, " he says, " causes the Calif omians less trouble 
and care than the education of their children, which is 
merely confined to a short period, and ceases as soon as 



150 Primitive Family and Education 

the latter are capable of making a living for themselves — 
that is, to catch mice and to kill snakes. If the young 
Calif ornians have once acquired sufficient skill and strength 
to follow these pursuits, it is all the same to them whether 
they have parents or not. Nothing is done by these 
in the way of admonition or instruction, nor do they 
set an example worthy to be imitated by their offspring. 
. . . The consequence is, that the children follow their 
own inclinations without any restraint, and imitate all 
the bad habits and practices of their equals, or still older 
persons, without the slightest apprehension of being 
blamed by their fathers and mothers, even if these should 
happen to detect them in the act of committing the most 
disgraceful deeds. The young Calif ornians who live in 
the missions commence roaming about as soon as the mass 
is over, and those that spend their time in the fields go 
wherever, and with whomsoever, they please, not seeing 
for many days the faces of their parents, who, in their 
turn, do not manifest the slightest concern about their 
children, nor make any inquiries after them.*'* 

Among the Seminoles it is said that 

** the baby, well into the world, learns very quickly 
that he is to make his own way through it as best he may. 

' Baegert, /. c, 369. I cannot forbear adding the Father's com- 
ment on this system of education — an echo of eighteenth century 
KuUurkampf: "Heaven may enlighten the Calif ornians, and preserve 
Europe, and especially Germany, from such a system of education, which 
coincides, in part, with the plan proposed by that ungodly visionary (!) 
J. J. Rousseau, in his Emile, and which is also recommended by some 
other modern philosophers of the same tribe. If their designs are 
carried out, education, so far as faith, religion, and the fear of God are 
concerned, is not to be commenced before the eighteenth or twentieth 
year, which, if viewed in the proper light, simply means to adopt the 
Californian method, and to bring up the youth without any education 
at all." 



Content of Primitive Education 151 

His mother is prompt to nourish him, and solicitous in 
her care for him if he falls ill; but as far as possible she 
goes her own way and leaves the little fellow to go his."'° 
Similar methods prevail among the Thompson River 
Indians and certain tribes of Oregon." Delaware 
Indian boys were "never obliged to do anything: They 
loiter about, live as they please, and follow their own 
fancies."" Conflicting reports come in regarding the 
Eskimo. ^^ Perhaps it is true that the rigors of a polar 
struggle for life put a premium on hardy individualism 
which only self-education of the strictest type can ac- 
complish; so that after all what some observers have 
branded as neglect may be only a deep-laid educational 
scheme. But there are other cases of self-made savages 
where no such rational motive can be imputed. Children 
of the Mortlock Islanders, for example, are loved, but 
their education receives almost no attention; "siewachsen 
auf wie sie wollen."'^ Of the Brazilians von Martius 
says: "Erziehung findet eigentlich von Seite der Aeltern 
nicht statt. Der Vater duldet die Kinder, die Mutter 
niitzt sie."^s We have been unable to find traces 
of education among the Fuegians.^^ With the Indians 
of Guiana, "as soon as the children can run about they are 
left almost to themselves, or rather they begin to mimic 
their parents . . . the boys run wild." ^^ 

"^MacCauley, Bur. Ethn., v., 496. 

" Teit, in Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. Memoirs, ii. (1900), 177-8; Gibbs, 
/. c, i., 198, 209; Bancroft, N. R., i., 566. 

" Loskiel, /. c, 62-3; somewhat contradicted by Nelson, Ind. of N. /., 
42. 

^3 Ploss, ii., 340; Letoumeau, L'evol. de Veduc, 226; Lippert, 1., 227; 
Ratzel, ii., 106. 

^^Kubary, in Mittheil. d. Geogr. Gesell. zu Hamburg, 1878-9, 261 
(Steinmetz). ' »s Beitrdge, i., 124; Lippert, i., 226 J". 

*^ Cf. Letourneau, /. c, 138. ^i Im Thurn, /. c, 219. 



152 Primitive Family and Education 

Turning now to Africa, we find that among the 
Ewe negroes, for instance, there exists neither a word 
for education, nor any comprehension of its aims or 
means. ^^ Travelers and explorers in both the east 
and west of Africa are singularly silent in the matter 
of purposive education among the natives. A possible 
exception might be made in the case of the Marutse- 
Mabunda, a tribe south of the Zambesi River: here the 
boys are early taught the use of weapons; but, the 
observer adds, they learn mostly by themselves, both 
to hunt and to fish, and early build their own huts.^' 
In Sir Harry Johnston's monumental work on the Uganda 
Protectorate, the only explicit reference to native ed- 
ucation I have encountered concerns the Nandi peoples, 
of whom he says, "children are trained with a certain 
amount of discipline, and, like the ancient Persians, are 
taught to draw the bow and speak the truth. "^'' But the 
Jekris, Sobos, and Ijos of the Warri District in the 
Niger Coast Protectorate, whose "children practically 
do as they like," offer more nearly the African norm.^^ 
Self-education by simple imitation is said to prevail among 
the Veddahs.^^ And the Igorot youth fares no better. ^^ 
In German Melanesia the young receive absolutely 
no sort of instruction; whatever they learn they pick up 
by casual observation; and this applies to the most 
fundamental arts of getting a living, as well as to minor 
and major morals. ^"^ In Micronesia children grow up 
without any sort of restraint, lack parental discipline 
and fear of their elders. They receive practically no in- 
struction; "If any one wants to learn how to make or do 

'8 Ploss, ii., 343; Letourneau, 66, 74. ^9 Ploss, ii., 342. 

*" L. c, ii., 879. " Granville and Roth, xxviii. J. A. I., 107. 

22 Letourneau, 36. ^^ Jenks, 68-9. 

*< Pfeil, Studien u. Beohachtungen aus der Siidsee, 24-5. 



Content of Primitive Education 153 

anything he simply watches, imitates, and practices." In 
New Guinea, Ponape, the Caroline, Marshall, and Solomon 
Islands, almost identical conditions obtain. "Papuan 
children grow up with full freedom and without re- 
straint, drilHng, or bullying of any kind."^^ Fiji children 
"grow up without knowledge, without good morals or 
habits, without amiability or worth, fitted by the way in 
which they are reared to develop the worst features of 
heathen life."^^ Another list of cases might be cited 
where there is not only no attempt at discipline, but even 
deliberate encouragement to self-assertiveness and disorder. 
In all such instances, experience, if not the best, is certainly 
the only teacher. 

Sparing the Rod. — A wise old German used to say 
that *'wenn gleich ein Kind ein Engel ware so bedurfe 
es doch der Ruthe. " But the birch of our forefathers 
was sadly neglected in savagery. It is a gross error to 
assert that corporal punishment is a return to savagery 
or a survival of it. Only as we approximate civilization 
does the discipline of the rod cut much of a figure; it 
was not a barbarian, but a Greek poet who said, 
"the man who has not been flogged, did not get any 
education." At times, for example during the Middle 
Ages, when asceticism held sway, this symbol of control 
received such worship as never did Astarte in the days 
of her glory. But no savages were ever ascetics by 
choice, and in general their attitude toward children was 

'spioss, ii., 337; Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 295; Letourneau, 46; Finsch, 
Ethnol. Erjahrungen,m., 31, 131, 242; Elton, "Nat. of Solomon Isl.," 
xvii. J. ^. /., 94; Semon, In the Austral. Bush, 332; Hagen, Unter den 
Papua's, 230-2; Wallace, Malay Archipelago, 589; Abel, Savage Life 
in New Guinea, 43. 

'^ Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 141-2. 



154 Primitive Family and Education 

marked by sentimentalism rather than by correction 
and guidance. 

Steinmetz cites a list of thirty-two peoples among 
whom no parental discipline exists.^' It includes the 
Ainos, Loyalty, Marshall, and Pelew Islanders, New 
Hebrideans, Dyaks, Warraus, Patagonians, Kubu, 
Bechuana,Ama-Xosa,Bakuba,Toba-Battaks, etc. Ploss 
adds the Dengas of the Upper Nile and the Farafrahs of 
the Libyan Desert.''^ It is pretty generally true that 
but little family discipline exists among peoples whose 
children acquire maturity and independence at an early 
age. A curious little cameo illustrative of this condition 
has been preserved for us by an eighteenth century 
traveler to the Loango: "A missionary one day 
heard a mother giving a small commission to her son. 
The child was only about eight years old, but he an- 
swered gravely, "Do you think then that I am a boy? " "^^ 
Wuttke notes the absolute lack of discipline amongst 
the Kamtchdales.3« Crantz wrote of the Greenland- 
ers over a century and a half ago, and the observation 
still holds good : 

"The children are brought up without any discipline, 
or any severity of reprimand or chastisement by their 
parents. But indeed severe treatment of the Greenlander's 
children is on the one hand not very needful, because they 
run about as quiet as lambs, and fall into very few extrava- 
gancies; and on the other hand it would be fruitless, because 

"' Ztscft., f. Socialwiss., i., 610-21; Ethnol. Stud.t ii., 181-9; it is ques- 
tionable if the Kubus enter this category. 
^^ Op. ciL, ii., 344; general discussion, ii., 331. 
'" Proyart, in Pinkerton, xvi., 571. 
3«» Gesch. des Heid., i., 187. 



Content of Primitive Education 155 

if a Greenlander cannot be influenced to do a thing by- 
gentle entreaty, or by rational arguments, he will sooner 
be killed than compelled to it. Whether this is the effect 
of a natural self-will in their complexion, or whether it 
proceeds from the long habit of unrestrained education, I 
am not able to determine. "^^ 

Of the Australians it is said : 

'*As a rule, he [the child] has his own way from morning 
till night, and becomes the most self-willed little imp under 
the sun. Correction is rarely thought of; but should the 
parental temper on any occasion be ruffled, it generally 
results in a severe blow with the back of the tomahawk 
on the head of the child." ^^ 

Among the Dieri, children are never chastised; if a 
mother broke this rule she would be soundly whipped 
by her husband. ^^ To Morton Bay (Queensland) 
natives the idea of chastising a child or not giving in 
to his wildest whim is terrible. ^ 4 ^'The natives of 
Cooper's Creek (Victoria) do not pimish their children 
for committing theft, but the father or mother has to 
fight with the person from whom the property was 
stolen; upon no occasion are the children beaten. " ^^ 

The Maoris "idolize children and spoil them dread- 
fully. "^^ Spix and Martius found that among the 
tribes of the upper Amazon the children knew no obedience 
and never received correction except as an expression of 

3' L. c, i., 162. S3 Curr, The Australian Race, i., 71. 

33 Gason, in Curr, /. c, ii., 46, 53. 34 j. D. Lang, Queensland, 337. 
35 Smyth, Ahorig. of Victoria, i., 129; Ploss, ii., 334-5; Curr, /. c, ii., 53. 
3* Trcgear, xix. J. A. I., 99. 



IS6 Primitive Family and Education 

mighty anger {heftigen Zornes),^'^ Speaking of the 
Macusis of Rio Branco, von Martius writes: "Strafen 
und Zuchtigung kennt der Indianer nicht."^^ The 
Kaingang Indians south of Brazil never scold or flog their 
children who "in consequence are very impudent and 
disobedient.'* The Warraus are averse to any sort of 
corporal discipline, and suffer the most grievous faults 
to go uncorrected. 3^ Great extremes of opinion and 
practice in the matter of discipline occur among the North 
American Indians. The Delawares, Apaches, and others 
avoided punishing their children for fear of possible sub- 
sequent revenge. The Ricaras "never whipped even 
children from their birth. "'*° The Dakotas and 
Chippeways punished their girls but not the boys, in 
deference probably to the common notion that the boy's 
spirit must not be broken, but that the female must be 
kept "meek and lowly of heart.'* Powers writes of the 
Pomos : 

"Men who have lived familiarly among these Indians 
for years say that they have never yet seen an Indian 
parent chastise his offspring, or correct them any otherwise 
than with berating words in a frenzy of passion, which is 
also extremely seldom." ^^ 

The same might be said of the Ahts, Tuscaroras and 
Zunis.4» 

Lack of proper training and discipline prevails pretty 

»' Brasiliens, 1226. 

^^ Beitrdget i., 644; cf. Rivet, on the Jibaros, in VAnthropologie, 
xviii., 605-6. 

a'Ambrosetti, 74 Globus, 245; Schomburgk, Britisch Guiana, i., 167. 

*^ Lewis and Clarke, Travels, i., 148. 

^^Loskiel, 61-2; Powers, Gal, Ind., in vol. iii., Contr. N. A. EthnoL, 
I53» 222. 

^» Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, 160; Lawson, H. ofN, C, 
326; Gushing, Primitive Motherhood, 37. 



Content of Primitive Education 157 

widely throughout all the East Indies and the islands 
of the Pacific. 

*'The Sea Dyaks, as I have observed, generally prefer 
male children; and the more mischievous and boisterous 
they are when young the greater the delight they afford 
their parents. The observation, *He is very wicked,' 
is the greatest praise. They indulge them in everything, 
and at home give way to their caprices in an extraordinary 
manner.""*^ 

Another writer adds of them, *' there is but little author- 
ity and discipline in matters which are beyond the 
ordinary routine of daily life'* (referring especially to 
matters of education). ^ 4 In New Guinea punishment 
is extremely rare and occurs only when parents are in a 
temper. 4 5 "Andamanese children are reproved for 
being impudent and forward, but this discipline is not 
enforced by corporal pimishment.^^e Fritsch calls 
Samoan children ** tyrants," whose parents make no 
attempt to resist. ^^ gut Robert Louis Stevenson 
gives by all odds the liveliest account I have met of 
the infant despotism of the South Seas. Writing 
particularly of the Marquesas he says: 

**For no people in the world are so fond or so long-suffering 
with children — children make the mirth and the adorn- 
ment of their homes, serving them for playthings and for 
picture galleries. 'Happy is the man that has his quiver 
full of them.' The stray bastard is contended for by 

43 St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i., 48-9; cf. J. A. I., xxi., 
20. 44 Ling Roth, Nat. of Sarawak, i., 103. 

45 Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 390. 46 Man, xii. J.A.l.^ 93. 

47 Samoafahrten, 321. 



158 Primitive Family and Education 

rival families, and the natural and the adopted children 
play and grow up together undistinguished. The spoiling, 
and I may almost say the deification, of the child, is no- 
where carried so far as in the eastern islands; and furthest, 
according to my opportunities of observation, in the 
Paumotu group, the so-called Low or Dangerous Archipel- 
ago. ... It is a daily matter in some eastern islands to 
see a child strike and even stone its mother, and the mother, 
so far from punishing, scarce ventures to resist. In some, 
when his child was born, a chief was superseded and re- 
signed his name; as though, like a drone, he had fulfilled 
the occasion of his being. And in some the lightest words 
of children had the weight of oracles. Only the other 
day, in the Marquesas, if a child conceived a distaste to 
any stranger, I am assured the stranger would be slain. 
And I shall have to tell in another place an instance of 
the opposite: how a child in Manihiki, having taken a fancy 
to myself, her adoptive parents at once accepted the 
situation and loaded me with gifts. "^^ 

According to Ellis, in Polynesia the father usually 
exercises no control over his child; still less the mother; 
the child is not supposed to obey her and is often even 
encouraged to insult her (probably as a proof of stalwart 
manhood!). In German Melanesia, children are said 
to be 'Very badly spoiled/' In the Fiji islands there is 
no kind of direct training or discipline; parents punish 
only when they themselves are enraged, and even then 
the children resist. In the Gilbert Islands, "Eltern 
lassen sich von ihren Sprosslingen Alias gefallen."^^ 

48 In the South Seas, 38. 

49 Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 261; Ploss, ii., 336; Pfeil, Studien u. 
Beobachtungen, 19; Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., iii., 31 ; Williams and Calvert, 
Fiji, 130, 141-2; Abel, Savg. Life in New Guinea, 43. 



Content of Primitive Education 159 

Unformulated Group Discipline. — It must not be 
supposed that if savage children failed to receive cor- 
rection it was because they never needed it. On the 
contrary, the savage child needed trimming and prun- 
ing no less than our modem young hopeful ; and what is 
more to the point, he got it, though not exactly through 
well formulated means. But in all ages "youth and 
crabbed age" have been judged by their peers and had 
their rough edges taken off by that subtle process of 
attrition which is the first requisite to association. So 
that}(v7hen we say no discipline exists among a given 
people, we mean merely that there is no formulated 
discipline, institutionalized, as it were, and located in 
the hands of parent, schoolmaster, etc. Among the 
Seri Indians, for example, there is no formal discipline, 
but this informal rubbing down goes on just the same. 

"The boys are at once the most restless and the most 
lawless members of the tribe — indeed, the striplings seem 
often to ignore the maternal injunctions and even to evade 
the rarely uttered avuncular orders, so that their move- 
ments are practically free, except in so far as they are 
themselves regimented and graded by strength and fleet- 
ness or success in hunting. 5° 

Aggressiveness Fostered. — ^Another word might be 
added regarding the deUberate cultivation of youthful 
aggressiveness. Lewis and Clarke state that among the 
Shoshones, a warlike Indian tribe, the children were 
seldom corrected; 

"the boys, particularly, soon become their own masters; 
they are never whipped, for they say that it breaks their 
s" McGee, "The Seri Indians," Bur. Ethn., xvii., part i., 271. 



i6o Primitive Family and Education 

spirit, and that after being flogged, they never recover 
their independence of mind, even when they grow to 
manhood." 5' 

A recent writer on the Indians lays down a generali- 
zation which is substantially accurate. 

*'In contrast to Pueblo ideas of parental authority, it is 
worthy of notice that, in many parts of aboriginal America, 
obedience has not been considered an essentially commend- 
able characteristic of social life. Among some of the wilder 
tribes, a rebellious, quarrelsome disposition on the part 
of the sons has been encouraged rather than opposed. 
Chastisement for obstinacy has been considered detri- 
mental to the growth of courage, and hence obstructive 
in the making of a warrior. With many savages, quarrels 
are of almost daily occurrence, and brawls among the 
youths are constantly going on.''^^ 

Magic as Discipline. — But another reason is some- 
times assigned by lower peoples for not resorting to 
physical applications for moral delinquency, viz., that 
magic and other means are a better curative. Mr. 
Kidd gives a curious example of such notions; we reserve 
our judgment as to their efficacy. 

'* When a Kafir boy has stolen pumpkins or sweet cane 
from another person's gardens, the owner may beat the 
boy if he can catch him, just to relieve the feelings (!). 
But he does not stop there. As a Kafir said to me, 'We 
black men do not look at these things as the white men do ; 

^^ Travels, {{., 164. Similarly, Smith, The Araucantans, 200-1; 
Hennepin, Description de la Louisiane, Les Mceurs des Sauvages, 51. 

s* Fynn, The American Indian as a Product of Environment, 148-9. 
This statement is somewhat disturbing to Mr. Spencer's dictum on the 
education of warlike peoples! 



Content of Primitive Education i6i 

they are content to punish the thief: we try to cure him/ 
I pointed out that the latter sentiment was most admirable, 
and asked him how the natives cured a young thief. The 
man said that this could easily be done if only the name 
of the boy were known. The Kafir takes a large pot made 
of earthenware and fills it with water, which is made to 
boil over a fire; medicines are then thrown into the boiling 
water. As the pot of water is boiling furiously the people 
uncover it and shout out the name of the boy at the boiling 
medicine, repeating the name many times. When they 
feel sure that the boy's name has well penetrated into the 
water, they cover up the pot and place it on one side for 
several days; at the end of that period the boy, who is 
utterly ignorant of the liberties taken with his name, 
is said to be cured of the habit of thieving. A number of 
wizard-charms are practised in a similar way, the name of 
the person to be injured being regarded fully as valuable 
for the working of the charm as the body of the person 
would be." 5^ 

However admirable the motive in this particular instance, 
it illustrates, as do all the other cases cited, the absence 
of a rational, consistent notion of training and discipline; 
and that correction, if not utterly lacking, was usually 
merely the motor expression of an outburst of passion. 

Family Sometimes Hinders Social Discipline. — We 

have already suggested that normal life in society 
brings with it inevitably discipline in some form, and 
by some means or other. We are now in a position to 
assert definitely that in savagery very frequently the 
family not only did not supply training and discipline 
fitting for societal life, but furthermore was often a 
distinct hindrance to peace and good order. "Many 

S3 Savage Childhood, 73. 



i62 Primitive Family and Education 

defects in savage life may be traced to the want of 
parental restraint in the plastic days of childhood. "^4 
Matthew Arnold in a speech at Eton once quoted a 
striking passage in the life of Epictetus which with 
trifling changes might well fit many a group of savage 
elders, and perhaps almost any modem college Com- 
mittee on Discipline. Said he: 

* 'The philosopher Epictetus, who had a school at Nicopo- 
lis in Epirus at the end of the first century of our era, thus 
apostrophises a young gentleman whom he supposes to 
be applying to him for education: — 'Young sir, at home 
you have been at fisticuffs with the man-servant, you have 
been a nuisance to the neighbors; and do you come here 
with the composed face of a sage, and mean to sit in judg- 
ment upon the lesson, and to criticise my want of point? 
You have come in here with envy and chagrin in your 
heart, humiliated at not getting your allowance paid you 
from home; and you sit with your mind full, in the inter- 
vals of the lecture, of how your father behaves to you, 
and how your brother. What are the people at home 
saying about me? — They are thinking: Now he is getting 
on! They are saying: He will come home a walking 
dictionary! — Yes, and I should like to go home a walking 
dictionary; but then there is a deal of work required, and 
nobody sends me anything, and the bathing here at 
Nicopolis is dirty and nasty; things are all bad at home 
and all bad here."^^ 

In such a case other social agencies are burdened with 
the task of undoing the results of bad training or no 

54 Sutherland, /. c, i., 119. 

55 Mixed Essays and Irish Essays, 409. Tacitus in his Dialogue on 
Oratory is equally severe with the Roman youth of his day. 



Content of Primitive Education 163 

training. Ignorance of the nature of parenthood, 
sentimentalism, and marital difficulties combine with 
sex prejudices to rob the child of a very vital part of his 
education. The reductio ad absurdum of such a situa- 
tion occurs in New Guinea and Fiji, where the father 
deliberately teaches and encourages the child to beat its 
mother, and to revenge injuries done to their friends. ^^ 
And it is to be feared that there are many Fijian 
parents throughout the world ! 

Beginnings of Conscious Education. — Into the second 
group, according to the classification we have adopted, 
fall those peoples who, while recognizing to a certain 
degree the value of education to the individual and to 
the group, do not perceive its full significance; whose 
educational technique is obviously limited and uneven ; 
or who fail properly to balance instruction and dis- 
cipline. In a certain sense, modem civilized nations, 
almost without exception, might well be included within 
this group ; it is merely a question of more or less. But 
here we are concerned rather with the **less," and the 
limits of the group will be easily enough descried if 
we place at one end, say the Australians, where the 
education of the youth really begins only at his initia- 
tion; and at the other, the Russians of the fifteenth 
or sixteenth century, where to break a child's ribs with 
the stick of correction was considered of vastly more 
educative value than any attempt to cultivate his mind. 

Vocational Training. — First in importance comes 
vocational training. It is here that familial instruction 
appears at its best, for most of the savage arts of self- 

s^Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 390; Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 130-1, 139; 
Ratzel (Germ, ed.), ii., 276; Rivet, V Anthropologie, xviii., 605-6. 



164 Primitive Family and Education 

maintenance are domestic, and not sufficiently differen- 
tiated to require skilled teaching. The father usually- 
assumed the duty of introducing his son into the manly 
arts and carried him along on fishing or hunting expedi- 
tions, the first years of infancy past. To the mother 
naturally fell the business of acquainting her daughter 
with whatever details of housewifery or agriculture 
her own life compassed. ^^ Such instruction had the 
advantage of being actually in the art itself or in 
miniature playful imitations of the art. To prepare 
himself for shooting reindeer, the Eskimo lad is given a 
tiny bow and arrows, and a little reindeer foetus set up for 
him to aim at. The Dakota girl had her little work-bag 
with its awl and sinew, and learned to make diminu- 
tive moccasins as her mother made large ones. Educa- 
tion in these simple arts is comparatively easy, for the 
problems are vivid, specific, and directly anticipatory to 
real life, with the further advantage that they admit of 
constant repetition and drill. To the savage child the 
technical processes of his elders, warfare, the chase, the 
medicine dance, agriculture, and hearthside industries, 
were vastly more accessible than are our own more 
highly complex systems of industry. To be sure, our 
modem boy may still mimic in play certain social 
functions ; he may whip off the tops of weed enemies, or 
metamorphose himself into a battleship, turn a flip, 
or execute a buck and wing dance. Yet these plays can 
hardly be called definite anticipations of his future life. 
The contrast is all the more striking if we turn to his 
industrial games. What sort of play, or what sort of 

57 The Andamanese furnish an excellent example; see Man, xii. 
J. A, I., 329; cf. Curr, The Australian Race, i., 71. 



Content of Primitive Education 165 

work in miniature will prepare him to build a modem 
steam-heated house, steer an armored cruiser, weave a 
blanket, carve, a gunstock, or prepare the mold for a 
steel casting? v Modern industry has grown remote from 
childhood, and is only accessible by a careful formal 
educational introduction. The industrial revolution 
brings with it an inevitable demand for intensive edu- 
cation. However it may have bred a generation of 
laissez-faireists in political economy, it cannot tolerate 
them in education and live. But primitive societies 
faced no such complexities. In a community of fisher- 
men practically all were fishers; among herdsmen all 
were herders; and the son, if his father did not teach 
him the art, learned in spite of himself from his fellows 
in the group. 

It is not unfair to say that the beginnings of savage 
education closely resemble the apprentice system, and 
that the employments of the family and of the group as a 
whole are static and hereditary. That Chinese cobbler 
who carried a sign on his back reading, *'I have been 
a cobbler for 400 years, " summarized primitive voca- 
tional education. It will suffice to enumerate the chief 
savage occupations figuring on their "course of studies." 
Hunting, fishing, canoeing, sledding, trapping, and crude 
building predominate. Warlike peoples specialize with 
the spear or bow. y In agricultural communities the 
hoe and the yam stick, amongst herders the care of 
cattle, are the chief solicitudes. It is almost universally 
true that the domestic education of girls precedes that 
of boys. In many tribes where little home training is 
bestowed upon the boys, their sisters early become 
miniature housewives. And where both sexes are 



i66 Primitive Family and Education 

formally taught, the girls usually come first. Further- 
more, domestic education has nearly always played a 
much larger part in the girl's life. 

Physical Training. — Perhaps only secondary to 
purely vocational instruction comes physical training 
in the primitive curriculum. It ranges from the Pent- 
athlon of the Greeks to practices rivaling the Samurai- 
code of mediaeval Japan. Many savage children have 
astonished European travelers by their precocity in 
swimming. The Polynesians and Sea Dyaks, for ex- 
ample, swim almost before they can walk. Nimbleness 
of limb and endurance are the commonest ideals. 

"The Apache boy had for pedagogue his father and grand- 
father, who began early to teach him counting, to run on 
level ground, then up and down hill, to break branches 
from trees, to jump into cold water, and to race, the whole 
training tending to make him skilful, strong, and fearless." ^^ 

Some of the StsEelis Indians of British Coltimbia still 
pine for the good old times when strict training made 
their people prosperous and vigorous. In those days, 

"parents made their children go out and bathe in the 
river every night and morning the whole year round as 
soon as they could walk alone. They would first whip 
their naked bodies with small branches to make the'skin 
tingle and burn. Some people used to put these whips 
in the flames of the house-fire for a little while. A whip 
thus treated when applied to a boy's back would save him 
from becoming idle and lazy. Whipped daily with such 
an instrument he would become an active and energetic 
man, and be able to acquire much wealth. When they 

58 O. T. Mason, Bur. Ethn. Bulletin 30 ("H. B. of Am. Ind."), 30. 



Content of Primitive Education 167 

reached puberty they would constantly make use of the 
* KaitiostEl, ' or sweat house, lance their bodies and 
limbs with knives, Ho let the bad blood out and make 
them strong, ' and force long rods down their gullets into 
their stomachs to make themselves vomit. Often they 
would lie out all night and expose their bodies to the ele- 
ments till they became so hardy that they could scarcely 
feel the cold at all, and could stay for hours without dis- 
comfort in the chilling waters of the river or lake."^' 

Amongst the Guanaches, 

" means were devised to develop the physical constitu- 
tion of the young, to give strength to their limbs and 
dexterity to their motions; to rouse up their martial spirit 
and excite them to emulation and deeds of daring. To 
accomplish this desirable end the young were encouraged 
to challenge each other to single combat, and on freat 
festivals and other public rejoicings a spirited contest for 
superiority was exhibited in the presence of numerous 
spectators, which with the exercise of leaping, running, 
and throwing of disks, tested the prowess, the power of 
endurance, and the skilful use of weapons of the rival 
champions. Even as young children /they were practised 
in the art of dodging and swaying the body to and fro 
with agility, so as to enable them to avoid the missile that 
might be aimed at them. At first soft clay balls were 
thrown, for which, as soon as they succeeded in avoiding 
these, nuts were substituted; the exercise was continued 
with small pebbles, which was followed by blunted darts, 
and at last sharp-pointed javelins were used."^° 

59 C. HiU Tout, xxxiv. /. ^. /., 316. 

•5" Featherman, /. c, 5th div., 337; no responsibility is assumed for 
the viscous English of this citation ! 



i68 Primitive Family and Education 

The Bedouin method of "hardening" is typical. The 
boy is 

"accustomed from his earliest youth to the fatigues and 
dangers of a pastoral life, and his constitution is steeled 
to endurance, hardships, and privations. Fathers desire 
to see their sons possessed, at an early age, of a manly 
spirit of independence and of a prudent assurance of self- 
confidence."^^ 

The Caraib youth received a peculiarly brutal training. 

"In the Antilles the father invited his most intimate 
friends, and on admonishing his son to be valiant in the 
fight and take vengeance on his enemies, he killed a bird 
of prey called oiiashi, by striking it against the forehead 
of his son, who was made to devour the heart, that by this 
act of barbarism he would be steeled to commit the more 
barbarous deed of devouring the heart of the enemies of 
his nation." ^^ 

The Fiji Islanders accustom their children early to re- 
gard the murder of a man as slight and commonplace. 

"One of the first lessons taught the infant is to strike its 
mother, a neglect of which would beget a fear lest the 
child should grow up to be a coward. Thus these people 
are nurtured 'without natural affection,* and trained to 
be implacable, unmerciful. ' Several proofs of this ,1 have 
witnessed at Somosomo; mothers leading their children 
to kick and tread upon the dead bodies of enemies."^* 

I have reserved the training of the boy Head-Hunter 

<*» Ibid., 370. ^* Ibid., 3d. div., 270. 

^» Williams and Calvert, Fiji, 139. 



Content of Primitive Education 169 

as a last striking case. Mr. W. H. Fumess in his re- 
markable book on the *' Home Life of the Borneo Head- 
Hunters'* describes his attempts to get at the psychology 
of head-hunting. He found it to be thoroughly prag- 
matic, no mere excrescence of barbarity, but a practice 
entirely integrated with the Head-Hunters* thought 
and conduct of life. Hence, as was to be expected, no 
less thorough and concrete was the training for this 
** highest aim in life.'* 

"'Don't you feel sorry,' I asked, 'for those you kill? 
It hurts badly to be cut by a parang; you don't like it, 
and those whom you cut down dislike it as much as you do ; 
they are no more anxious to go to Apo Leggan or Long 
Julan [Regions in the Beyond] than you are.' 'Ah, Tuan,' 
he replied, with a suggestion of a patronizing chuckle 
in his voice, ' you feel just as I did when I was a little boy 
and had never seen blood. But I outgrew such feelings, 
as every one should. My father, a very great warrior, 
and known and feared by the people of many, many rivers, 
wanted his sons to be as brave and fearless as he was 
himself. So one day he dragged out into the jungle old 
Ballo Lahing [widow of Lahing], and tied her fast to a tree 
by rattans on her wrists and ankles. She was a slave- 
woman, captured, when she was a young girl, by his grand- 
father over in the Batang Kayan country, and, at the 
time I speak of, she was very old, and weak, and very 
thin, and couldn't do any work because she was nearly 
blind. My father told my brother yonder and me, and one 
or two other boys, all of us little fellows then (I remember, 
my ears were still sore from having these holes for tiger- 
cat's teeth cut in them) well, — he told us we must go out 
with spears and learn to stick them in something alive, 
and not to be afraid to see blood, nor to hear screams, — 



170 Primitive Family and Education 

then I felt just as you do. Besides, I was really very fond 
of old Bdllo Lahing; she it was who tied on my first chawat 
[waist-cloth] for me, I remembered it well, for she laughed 
a great deal at me, and then I saw how few teeth she had, 
and she often used to sing me to sleep with that song about 
*'Tama Poyong with a twisted leg." I couldn't bear 
the thought of hurting her, and sending her away oQ to 
Long Julan, so I flatly refused to take a spear with me. 
But my father said I must; there was no harm in it; that 
it was right, and I must take one; he pulled me by the 
arm and I had to follow. Then I was afraid she might 
see me, so I sneaked round behind the tree and just pricked 
her with the point of iron, then she guessed what my father 
had tied her there for, and screamed as loud as she could, 
*'0h, don't! Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" over and over again 
and very fast ; I pricked her a little harder next time to see 
what she would say, but she only kept on shrieking the 
same words. Then one of the other boys, smaller even 
than I, ran his spear right through her thigh, like this, 
and the old people laughed and said that was good; and 
the blood ran down all over the wrinkles on her knees; 
and then I wanted to make it run — just in the same way, 
so I pushed and pushed my spear hard into her; and after 
that I never thought whether it was Ballo Lahing or not, 
I just watched the blood ; and we all ran round her, piercing 
her here and piercing there until she sank right down on 
the ground with her hands in the rattan loops above her 
head, which tumbled over to one side, and no more blood 
came out of her. Then my father praised us all loudly, 
and me in particular, and said we had been good boys and 
had done well! How could I feel at all sorry then for the 
old thing? I thought only that I had obeyed my father 
and that I was a great warrior and could wear horn-bill's 
feathers, and tiger-cat's teeth. That 's the way to become 
a man; a baby is afraid of blood, Tuan. My father was 



Content of Primitive Education 171 

right. No man can be brave who doesn't love to see his 
spear draw blood.'"^"* 

Here is a consummate example in proof of the theory 
that traits of character lie rather in social than physical 
heredity. It is also an apt denial of the notion that 
"ferocity " is an innate instinct. It affirms with savage 
distinctness the power of education over nature. 

Moral Education. — Primitive industrial education, 
as we have seen, was largely domestic, but not alto- 
gether so ; and both the family and the group shared in 
physical training. But in moral instruction the role of 
the group seems to overshadow that of the family. 
This is not surprising if, as we believe, the mores are a 
group product. We have already pointed out that 
even among peoples supposedly without any sort of 
formal education there always went on a more or less 
unconscious process of regimenting, springing out of 
the very nature of association itself. ^' But among 
peoples of higher culture status, moral instruction takes 
on a more definite and deliberate character. To be 
sure, such moral instruction is largely unethical, and 
consists rather in the What, the content of the social 
code, and only rarely the Why. Unreasoned acquies- 
cence is the most becoming attitude in the savage 
disciple. If it ever occurs to the learner to question, 
more What is invented to explain the difficulty. This 
is why custom persists and why from time to time new 
myths must be invented to explain age-old practices. 
Hence the importance of tradition and folklore in 

^4 Pp. 62-3; for a parallel case, see Capt. Lewin's account of the train- 
ing of a Lhoosai, in his Wild Races of S. E. India, 268-9. 



172 Primitive Family and Education 

primitive life. Count Okuma is inclined to refer the 
very beginnings of conscious education in old Japan to 
the poems, songs, and legends incident to the ancestor 
cult. ^^ It is undeniable that family ancestor worship 
was an exceedingly important factor in moral dis- 
cipline. ^^ But it was insufficient, nay, even deleteri- 
ous; for vigorous group life requires a broader, more 
flexible moral content. When social differentiation 
has gone far enough to permit the emergence of a 
definitely organized priesthood, a considerable share 
of distinctively moral teaching falls to it. But long 
before the constitution of ecclesiasticism, the priest or 
medicine man cooperates with the tribal elders in the 
inculcating and perpetuation of tribal lore and custom 
(in which we include the whole vast system of ghostism 
and daemonology, the whole theory and practice of 
keeping peace with * ' the unseen powers ") . Indeed , this 
is the typical moral engine in savagery. 

It will be impossible within the limits of this study to 
present more than a very few illustrations of this divi- 
sion of labor in primitive moral education. A very 
excellent example of domestic training, especially in the 
minor morals, occurs in Grinnell's description of the 
Blackfeet Indians. 

*' If a number of boys were in a lodge where older people 

were sitting, very likely the young people would be talking 
and laughing about their own concerns, and making so much 
noise that the elders could say nothing. If this continued 

^s Fifty Years of New Japan, ii., 113. 

^^ Cf. Wake, Kinship and Marriage, 230; Steinmetz, Ztscft. f. Social- 
wiss., I, 629; Tylor, P. C, ii., 115 #. 



Content of Primitive Education 173 

too long, one of the older men would be likely to get up and 
go out and get a long stick and bring it in with him. When 
he had seated himself, he would hold it up so that the 
children could see it and would repeat a cautionary formula, 
*I will give you gum!* This was a warning to them 
to make less noise, and was always heeded — for a time. 
After a little, however, the boys might forget and begin 
to chatter again, and presently the man, without further 
warning, would reach over and rap one of them on the 
head with the stick, when quiet would again be had for 
a time. In the same way, in winter, when the lodge was 
full of old and young people, and through lack of attention 
the fire died down, some older person would call out, ' Look 
out for the skunk!' which would be a warning to the boys 
to put some sticks on the iSre. If this was not done at once, 
the man who called out might throw a stick of wood across 
the lodge into the group of children, hitting and hurting 
one or more of them. It was taught also that, if, when 
young and old were in the lodge and the fire had burned 
low, an older person were to lay the unburned ends of the 
sticks upon the fire, all the children in the lodge would 
have the scab or itch. So, at the call, 'Look out for the 
scab ! * some child would always jump to the fire, and lay 
up the sticks. There were various ways of teaching and 
training the children. Men would make long speeches to 
groups of boys, playing in the camps, telling them what 
they ought to do to be successful in life. They would 
point out to them that to accomplish anything they must 
be brave and untiring in war; that long life was not desir- 
able; that the old people always had a hard time, were given 
the worst side of the lodge and generally neglected; that 
when the camp was moved they suffered from cold; that 
their sight was dim, so that they could not see far; that their 
teeth were gone, so that they could not chew their food. 
Only discomfort and misery await the old. Much better, 



174 Primitive Family and Education 

while the body is strong and in its prime, while the sight 
is clear, the teeth sound, and the hair still black and long, 
to die in battle fighting bravely. The example of success- 
ful warriors would be held up to them, and the boys urged 
to emulate their brave deeds. To such advice some boys 
would listen, while others would not heed it. The girls 
also were instructed. All Indians like to see women more 
or less sober and serious-minded, not giggling all the time, 
not silly. A Blackfoot man who had two or three girls 
would, as they grew large, often talk to them and give 
them good advice. After watching them, and taking 
the measure of their characters, he would one day get a 
buffalo's front foot and ornament it fantastically with 
feathers. When the time came, he would call one of his 
daughters and say to her : ' Now I wish you to stand here 
in front of me and look me straight in the eye without 
laughing. No matter what I may do, do not laugh.* 
Then he would sing a funny song, shaking the foot in the 
girl's face in time to the song, and looking her steadily 
in the eye. Very likely before he had finished, she would 
begin to giggle. If she did this, her father would stop 
singing and tell her to finish her laughing; and when she 
was serious again, he would again warn her not to laugh, 
and then would repeat his song. This time perhaps she 
would not laugh while he was singing. He would go through 
with this same performance before all his daughters. To 
such as seemed to have the steadiest characters, he would 
give good advice. He would talk to each girl of the duties 
of a woman's life and warn her against the dangers which 
she might expect to meet. At the time of the Medicine 
Lodge, he would take her to the lodge and point out to 
her the Medicine Lodge woman. He would say : * There 
is a good woman. She has built this Medicine Lodge, 
and is greatly honored and respected by all the people. 
Once she was a girl just like you ; and you, if you are good 



Content of Primitive Education 175 

and live a pure life, may some day be as great as she is now. 
Remember this, and try to live a worthy life.'"^^ 

I have given this long verbatim citation because it 
reveals the domestic side of primitive moral education 
at its highest ; it shows also its numerous naive methods. 
Yet even in this example the father and mother are 
by no means the sole actors ; the elders, the camp orator, 
and the Medicine Woman share equally the honors of 
instruction. Among the Pueblos, a highly domestic 
people, where the fireside virtues were ceaselessly in- 
culcated, the priest and the confraternity likewise 
assumed the role of instructors. Similarly in ancient 
Mexico, where at the age of seven or thereabouts the 
children were turned over to priestly care. 

Specific Group-Interest in Moral Education. — Vastly 
more important than domestic moral training seem to 
have been the puberty rites and initiatory ceremonies 
widely practiced among primitive peoples. Whether 
conducted by tribal elders or under the auspices of 
some secret society, these rites comprised not only a 
considerable amount of industrial technique, but nearly 
all of what we should call training for citizenship. 
The secret society was a school for social solidarity, 
as well as a sort of tribal guild of arts and crafts. These 
points are well brought out by Professor Haddon in an 
observation on the natives of Mer, an island in the 
Torres Straits. The lads, he says, *'were instructed 
in all that related to their daily life, in the most ap- 

^'Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 188-91; for further examples of 
such moral training as that of the Blackfeet, see Eastman, Ind. Boyhood, 
58-9; Featherman, i., 622; v., 201, 337; Spencer, Educ. of the Pueblo 
Child, 79, etc. 



176 Primitive Family and Education 

proved methods of fishing, fighting, or house-building^ 
and in all the duties which are classed as man's work, 
in addition to rules of conduct, the customs of the 
tribe, and the traditions of the elders/' ^^ The same 
writer found the initiation ceremonies at Tud 

" very good discipline. The self-restraint acquired during 
the period of complete isolation was of great value, and 
being cut off from all the interests of the outer world, the 
lads had an opportunity for quiet meditation, which must 
have tended to mature their minds, especially as they were 
at the same time instructed in a good code of morals. It 
is not easy to conceive of a more effectual means for a 
rapid training.^' 

The training was furthermore exceedingly definite and 
concrete; it inculcated honesty, generosity, filial re- 
spect, and the putting away of childish things. ^'^ This 
citation will suffice for the present to show that the 
primitive group as a whole was concerned with the subject 
of morals in its curriculum. We shall try to take up 
more in detail the services of the secret society under 
the subsequent topics. Methods and Organization. 

Tradition. — We have already had occasion to note 
the importance of tradition in primitive education, and 
this element will continue to crop out wherever we 
turn in our study of savagery. This is one of the most 
fascinating and suggestive phases of primitive life, 
but we shall have to confine ourselves to a single 
illustration of what the nature of savage tradition is 
and how it works. I have chosen a savage custom as 

•58 Intern. Arckiv f. Ethnogr., vi., 146. ^9 J, A. i*» xix., 359-6a 

T' Ibid., 408-13. 



Content of Primitive Education 177 

remote as possible from our own notions and feelings, 
namely, Head-Hunting, which with its accompanying 
myth will show how tradition can make anything right 
and seemly. Once more we are indebted to Mr. Fur- 
ness. For a time he was the guest of Aban Avit, a 
head-hunting chief in the heart of the Bomean jungle. 
He had the greatest difficulty in reconciling the benig- 
nant and hospitable character of his host with the 
cluster of human heads hanging just above him. By 
tactftil questioning he gets an ''explanation'* of the 
horrible custom. Aban Avit tells the legend of a 
pimitive expedition against a band of thieves, in the 
course of which a frog advises the warriors to cut off 
the heads of their robber enemies. The thieves are 
attacked and routed. 

*' * Many were killed that day, and the heads of three were 
cut off and carried away by Tokong's party, who retreated 
at once, and, almost before they knew it, were at the landing- 
place on the river. To their great amazement, they found 
their boats all ready and launched! No sooner were they 
seated than the boats began to move off, of their own accord, 
right up-stream in the direction of home. It was a miracle ! 
The current of the stream changed and ran up hill, as it 
does at flood-tide at the mouth of a river. They almost 
immediately reached the landing-place close to their house, 
and were overjoyed to see that the crops planted only 
fifteen days before had not only sprouted, but had grown, 
had ripened, and were almost ready for the harvest. In 
great astonishment they hurried through the clearings, 
and up to their house. There, they found still greater 
wonders! those who were ill when the party set out were 
now well, the lame walked and the blind saw! Rajah 



178 Primitive Family and Education 

Tokong and all his people were convinced on the spot 
that it was because they had followed Kop's advice and 
they vowed a vow that ever afterward the heads of their 
enemies should be cut off and hung up in their houses. 
This is the story of Rajah Tokong, Tuan. We all follow 
his good example. These heads above us have brought 
me all the blessings I have ever had; I would not have 
them taken from my home for all the silver in the country.' 
He turned to appeal to his people sitting near, and they, 
as many as understood Malay, nodded their heads, glancing 
from him to us, and murmuring, 'Betul, betul!' ('Tis 
true, 'tis true)."^' 

No better illustration could be found in all ethno- 
graphical literature for the educational significance of 
tradition and folklore. These oral traditions and the 
''customs that are written within the book,'' as the Besesi 
bathing song has it,'''' form the social matrix and make 
up by far the larger part of that social heredity which 
is the very stuff of informal education, and the basis of 
formal pedagogy. 

Other Elements in Primitive Ctirriculum. — It remains 
only to mention briefly a few other elements in the 
savage course of study. Language required consider- 
able attention, "i^^ Games, mimetic plays, and dancing 
had vast significance both as subject and method. 
Certain tribes, notably the Iroquois, gave particular 
attention to training for political life.^^ 'phg Chero- 
kees had a regular school for magicians. ^^ Nature 

7»Furness, /. c, 58-61. '^Skeat and Blagden, /. c, 669-70. 

73 Mooney, article "Child Life," in Bur. Ethn. Bulletin 30 {Handbook 
of Am. Ind.) 74 Loskiel, 139. 

7s MM. Hubert and Mauss, Annee SocioL, vii., 141. 



Content of Primitive Education 179 

lore is handed down through legends and traditions 
both gay and sober by the Indians of the Southwest. 
Especially the rabbit, coyote, bear, antelope, mouse, 
rattlesnake, magpie, woodpecker, eagle, horned-toad 
and their kindred form the heroes of these tales. Such 
primitive **nature study'* was of course closely connected 
with totemism in some form or other, but at the same 
time furnished a real literature of wit, wisdom, and 
morals. The art of story -telling was often highly culti- 
vated. Some Indian tribes had special raconteurs, who 
regaled their little audiences around the family hearth 
or in the men's house./ Among the Yukis there were 
men who dressed and acted like women, and ** devoted 
themselves to the instruction of the young by the narra- 
tion of legends and moral tales. "^^ The Chippeways 
had regular bards. With the Pueblos the old men are 
the story-tellers and cast their tales in a sort of blank 
verse. ''^ Similar story-telling by shamans and elders 
exists in the Andaman Islands. '^^ It is unnecessary 
to go into enumerative details, for the fiction habit is 
universal, and scarce a tribe but has its Homer or its 
Celtic Bard. With us fiction is light weight in matter 
and fimction; but not so in savagery; there it not 
only serves to while the passing hour, but also becomes 
a tremendously effective pedagogic aid. 

" In the long winter evenings, while the fire bums brightly 
in the centre of the lodge, and the men are gathered in to 
smoke, he [the boy] hears the folk-lore and legends of his 
people from the lips of the older men. He learns to sing 

7^ Chamberlain, The Child and Childhood in Folkthought, 205. 
77 Lummis, The Man Who Married the Moon. 5. 
7* Chamberlain, /. c, 205. 



i8o Primitive Family and Education 

the love-songs and the war-songs of the generations gone by. 
There is no new path for him to tread, but he follows in 
the old ways. He becomes a Dakota of the Dakota. "^^ 

It ought by this time to be pretty evident that in 
the making of a "Dakota of the Dakota," whether 
through language teaching, or training in politics, or 
dancing, or poetry, or song, or folklore, or religion, or 
custom, the community assumed a large, if not indeed 
the preponderant share of instruction. 

79 Riggs, Dakota Grammar, etc., vol. ix., Contrib. to Amer. EthnoL, pp. 
209 ff. For further details on the primitive curriculum, especially in 
its domestic aspect, see: Bancroft, N. R., i., 514, 549, 704, 773; ii., 246; 
Prince Roland Bonaparte, Les Habitants de Surinam, 137; Chamber- 
lain, The Child and Childhood in Folkthought, 163, 197, 236; Davidson, 
Hist, of Educ, 21-3; Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology," in Bur. EthnoL, iii., 
265-6; Eastman, Ind. Boyh., 51, 52, 94; Ellis, Ewe-Speaking People^ 
263; Featherman, i., 128, 469, 488, 567, 580, 599, 622; iii., 419, 493; v., 
94, 193; Frobenius, Die Masken u. Geheimbiinde Afrikas, 118, 12 1-2; 
Fynn, The Amer. Ind., 135; Grinnell, B.L. T., 184-5; Hardy and Elking- 
ton, The Savage South Seas, 34; Henderson, Text-Book in Prin. of Educ, 
sec. 13; im Thurn, Am. the Ind. of Guiana, 219, 227-8; Jour, of Am. 
Folk Lore, iv., 238; Letourneau, Vevol. de Veduc, 52-3, 118, 122, 133, 
165; Loskiel, 62; Man, xii. J. A. I., 47; Mason, in Handbook of Am. Ind., 
414-5; id., Woman's Share in Prim. Cult., 202, 206, 208, 209; Murdoch, 
in Bur. EthnoL, ix.; 380, 383, 417; Nelson, Ind. of N. J., 42, 44; Parsons, 
The Family, 91; Ploss, i., 6; ii., 323, 338, 347; Pop. Sci. Mo., xxii., no; 
Pratt, Two Years Am. New Guinea Cannibals, 330; Ratzel, i., 122, 365; 
ii., 106, 275, 291, 332, 436, 544; iii., 123; Riggs, Dakota Grammar, etc., 
210; Schmidt, La Societe civile dans le monde Romaine,6y, Schoolcraft, 
Hist, and Statist. Inf. Concern, the Hist., Cond., and Prospects of the 
Ind. Tr. of U. S., ii., 50; Short, The North Amer. of Antiquity, 432-3; 
F. C. Spencer, Educ. of the Pueblo Child, 11, 76, Tj, 88-91; Spencer and 
Gillen, N. T. of C. A., 24, 27, 36-7; Sutherland op., ciL, i., 127; Swift, 
Mind in the Making, 62; Theal, Kaffir Folk-Tales, 220. 



' CHAPTER VII 

METHODS AND ORGANIZATION OF PRIMITIVE EDUCATION 

METHODS 

Memory and Imitation. — Numerous glimpses of 
primitive educational Methods have already appeared 
in the discussion of the savage Curriculimi; and more 
will come out in examining the Organization of primi- 
tive instruction. The present topic will attempt to 
include briefly several primitive pedagogic devices 
in common practice. Modem education is inclined to 
worship the text-book, to reverence the printed word; 
but the primitive child labored imder no such dif- 
ficulty. To be sure, he had his texts and must con 
them by heart. Memoriter methods prevailed, yet 
they seemed to sink deep through constant practice 
and drill. The ways of wild nattue, the actual em- 
ployments of his people and their customs, traditions 
and lore furnished his sole texts, varying according to 
culture status. ' Of schoolhouses devoted exclusively 
to educational piuposes, savagery had none. The 
fireside, the fields, the Men's House, Medicine Lodge, 
or temple, were the common scenes of educational 
operations. The lack of pictures illustrating primitive 
educational methods is significant as showing that 
education and active life were undivorced; that edu- 

i8i 



1 82 Primitive Family and Education 

cation was largely unconscious and practical, so natural 
and necessary, so axiomatic, in fact, that it did not 
attract sufficient attention to be set down by primitive 
artists and sculptors. It was a vital process, and we 
seldom attend to vital processes save when they become 
deranged ; still less would the savage, whose introspection 
is nearly nil. With the exception of the Codex Men- 
doza, we are dependent wholly upon ethnography for our 
knowledge of savage educational method. It is evi- 
dent that among those peoples reported as without 
educational processes, self-teaching must be the sole 
method. Such self-teaching reduces to mere uncon- 
scious absorption. Given time enough, experience 
teaches to discriminate and to imitate the best models. 
But experience is always a costly teacher; hence there 
must have been an enormous loss of time and energy in 
reducing such initial unselective imitation to a proper 
basis of values. Whether the objects of this mimicry 
were one's parents or one's fellows in the group, it 
could be no other than static and repressive. ' 

Directed Imitation. — The substitution of consciously 
imposed and directed imitation for mere unreflective 
mimicry marks a notable advance in educational his- 
tory. It is also an index of higher economic status, and 
of greater stability in parental and familial relations. 
But throughout this stage in education the learner still 

'See in general: Graves, Hist, of Educ. Before the Middle Ages, i6; 
Monroe, H, of Ed., lo-ii; Ploss, ii., 323; Spencer and Gillen, /. c, 27 \ 
Chamberlain, /. c, 195-6; Mason, W. S. in P. C, 206; id., Orig. of In- 
vention, 198-200; Lippert, i., 229; Parsons, /. c, 91; Eastman, /. c, 3; 
Ihering, Evol. of the Aryan, 165; Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i., 539; 
Darwin, Desc. 0/ M., i., 154; Groos, Play of M., 280; Torday and Joyce, 
xxxvi. J. ^. /., 46; Johnston, Lion and Dragon, 249. 



Methods of Primitive Education 183 

is shackled; for imitation, literalism, habit, remain 
largely both end and means of instruction^' The Ewe- 
speaking peoples have a proverb : ' * Follow the customs 
of your father. What he did not do, avoid doing or 
you will harm yourself."^ And in this maxim lies 
bound up the program of primitive teaching even when 
it becomes more conscious and avise. It is especially 
characteristic of domestic education, but applies also 
to the several forms of public instruction. Among 
the Twana Indians of Washington, ^'children are 
taught continually from youth till grown, to mimic 
the occupations of their elders.'* ^ An early French 
voyager noted of the Indians he encountered: *'Ils ne 
pensent pas a donner d'autre education a leurs enfants 
qu'a enseigner aux fils exactement ce que faisait leur 
pere.*''* Mr. F. C. Spencer brings this whole matter 
into clear relief in his admirable little study of Pueblo 
education. ''Of the two great forces which have lifted 
humanity to the present place of civilization — limi- 
tation and invention — the latter has been almost wholly 
suppressed by the Pueblos." Hence exact reproduc- 
tion has become the standard in both industry and 
religion. Everything is convention, ossified into fixed, 
hardened forms. Thus Pueblo art, instead of improve- 
ment and variety, shows nothing but repetition, if not 
actual deterioration. 

''The advantages of the system are obvious. As there 
is no experimentation, no time, energy, or materials are 

* Ellis, Ewe-Speaking Peoples, 83. 
^3 Rev. M. Eels, Bulletin U. S. Geol. Survey, iii. (1877), 90- 

^ Pages, Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, tome cl., 153, cited by Ban- 
croft. 



1 84 Primitive Family and Education 

wasted. It is based on imitation, which generates habit, 
and habit once fixed, all subsequent actions become easier 
and more skillful, and, hence, the amount of work the 
individual is able to accomplish is greatly increased. But 
praise of the system is but an extolling of the advantages 
of habit in industry — a factor without which progress is 
impossible, yet without invention it may and does produce 
stagnation, "s 

It tends to arrest development by its strictly imposed 
limitations. 

Drill. — In any system of education aiming chiefly 
at a body of inflexible habit, drill must play a constant 
role. It was preeminently so in savage teaching. 
Progressive drill in the actual arts themselves, pro- 
gressive mimetic plays, rehearsing of song and legend 
are its chief forms. Kafir boys begin by attending 
to the calves in the kraal; "a good deal of time is passed 
in training them to rim and to obey signals made by 
whistling. The boys mount them when they are 
eighteen months or two years old and race about upon 
their backs. " ^ The Indian boys of Guiana, 

"as soon as they are no more than mere babies, have no 
other toys than small bows and arrows and such mimic 
weapons of the chase, which become bigger and bigger, 
more like the real things, as the boy grows older. Every 
boy, almost as soon as he can walk, can send his arrow 
into a frog; a little later, lizards are his aim; and again 
a little later, small birds. "^ "Very early the Indian 
boy assumed the task of preserving and transmitting the 

s Educ. of the Pueblo Child, 88-91, 76. 

^ Theal, Kaffir Folk-Lore, 220. 

' im Thurn, /. c, 227-8; Thunberg, in Pinkerton, xvi., 102, 



Methods of Primitive Education 185 

legends of his ancestors and his race. Almost every evening 
a myth, or a true story of some deed done in the past, was 
narrated by one of the parents or grandparents, while the 
boy listened with parted lips and glistening eyes. On the 
following evening he was usually required to repeat it. . . . 
The household became his audience, by which he was 
alternately criticized and applauded."^ 

In every land where girls received any training at all it 
usually took the forms of housewifery and agriculture, 
with drill to the point of drudgery. Repetition and 
drill often associated themselves with nature-observa- 
tion. Both boys and girls in Australia "are trained to 
take note of every track made by every living thing. "^ 
Eastman's boyhood training was particularly strict 
in this respect. 

"My uncle," says he, "who educated me up to the age 
of fifteen years, was a strict disciplinarian and a good 
teacher. When I left the tepee in the morning, he would 
say: 'Hakadah, look closely at everything you see'; 
and at evening, on my return, he used often to catechize 
me for an hour or so. "^° 

Exhortation and Story-Telling. — Exhortation is con- 
stantly plied in both savage and modern education to 
bolster up imitation and drill. But savages are pecu- 
liarly adept at the "word fitly spoken"; naturally so, 
since their libraries are oral and the tongue must supply 
the place of our printing press. The Aztec father, for 
example, used to deliver himself of long exhortations 

8 Eastman, /. c, 51. 

9 Spencer and Gillen, /. c, 24; cj. Mason, Origins oj Invention ^ 16, citing 
Morelet. " Eastman, 52. 



i86 Primitive Family and Education 

to his family much in the pompous Roman manner. 
The reader will recall from a preceding paragraph Mr. 
Grinnell's lively picture of the Indian camp orator 
urging groups of boys to good works. 

"In tribal society," writes Major Powell, "an important 
agency of instruction is found in oratory. Every patri- 
arch of a clan, every chief of a tribe, every shaman of a 
brotherhood, every chief of a confederacy, must be an 
instructor of his people. This instruction is necessarily 
conveyed by oratory; hence in tribal society a compara- 
tively large number of persons are spokesmen or official 
orators." "When a mere boy the Indian lad would be 
permitted to sit in the village coimcil house, and hear the 
assembled wisdom of the village or his tribe discuss the 
affairs of state. ... In this way he early acquired maturity 
of thought, and was taught the traditions of his people, 
and the course of conduct calculated to win him the praise 
of his fellows."" 

Even where there is no avowed hortatory purpose the 
oral method of transmission is very effective. The 
Ainos, for example, have no written language, but 
they have songs and tales ''handed down from their 
forefathers which are transmitted to their children, 
and thus they appear to preserve some rough sort of an 
account of their ancient history."'^ Perhaps the 
most effective service of the oral method came when it 
combined pulpit and stage in story-telHng. 

"During the long winter nights or during the periods of 
cold or inclement weather in which the Indians may not 

" Powell, Bur. Ethn., xx., p. cxcv; Nelson, Ind. of N. /., 43; School- 
craft, Histor. and Stat. Inform, resp. Ind. Tr. of U. S., ii., 57; Lawson, 
Hist, of N. C, 70. " Lieut. Holland, iii. J.A.I,^ 234. 



Methods of Primitive Education 187 

venture out, they sit around the fire and relate stories 
intended for the instruction as well as entertainment of 
the younger people. The older men have a great stock 
of these stories, and many of the women are noted for 
their ability in entertaining the children, who sit with 
staring eyes and open mouth, in the arms of their parents 
or elders. ^ ^ 

Perhaps we should modify what we said in a preceding 
paragraph as to the predominance of the What as com- 
pared with the Why in savage moral teaching; at least 
to the extent of recognizing that the oral communication 
of tradition and folklore in some instances takes on 
the character of explanation. In such cases there is 
a watered attempt at rationalizing conduct. For ex- 
ample, Mr. Lummis says of the Pueblos: 

** There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in 
which he has to be content with the bare command, ' Do 
thus'; for each he learns a fairy tale designed to explain 
how people first came to know that it was right to do thus, 
and detailing the sad results which befell those who did 
otherwise. '*^'* 

Fear and Superstition. — The fairy-tale method of the 
Pueblos suggests the whole negative aspect of legend 
transmission, namely, teaching by fear and superstition. 
It is probable that once the whole machine of ghost 
fear got a-going, no other single agency offered so 

^3 Turner, Bur. Ethn., xi., 327; Hennepin, Descript. de la Louisiane, 
McBurs des Sauvages, 50; cf. Annie Ker, Papuan Fairy Tales, introd. 

^4 The Man Who Married the Moon, 5; for general discussion of the 
pedagogic significance of folklore, see: Ploss, ii., 329^.; Theal, Kafir 
Folk-Lore, introduction; Sir George Grey, Polynesian Mythology^ 
preface, x., xi. 



1 88 Primitive Family and Education 

compelling a sanction for conduct. Hence we need not 
be siirprised to find superstitious fear used in all ages as 
an educational lever. Indeed Professor Dresslar in his 
suggestive study of Superstition and Education is in- 
clined to make the fear instinct the basic principle of 
savage pedagogy. 

**If you do not do this or that, some calamity will come 
upon you; some evil spirit will have power over you, or 
some nether torment will get hold of you and keep you in a 
state of infinite fright. We can scarcely over-estimate in 
the history of educational development the compelHng force 
of this desire * to flee the wrath to come. ' The presenta- 
tion to the primitive mind of some possible bad luck or 
danger produced more immediate results in obedience 
than all the longings which could be induced by attempting 
to fix the mind on the true worth of right conduct. And 
this will continue until the harrowing perils of mere exist- 
ence give place to a safer and calmer life, in which the 
instinct for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful will 
have a chance to develop its latent powers and emerge as 
the mentor of our future strivings. "^^ 

This is precisely what we meant when we said a 
while ago that the aims of savage education were the 
arts of self-maintenance, including peace with the 
powers unseen. Professor Dresslar foimd an enormous 
mass of superstitions surviving among to-be members 
of the teaching profession. Scarce a family in our 
land has never at some time or other invoked more or 
less definitely the ghost as an aid to discipline and a 

^5 Dresslar, Superstition and Education, 173; cf. Ploss, ii., 326, 329, 
341-3, etc. 



Methods of Primitive Education 189 

sanction to obedience. If we who pride ourselves 
on our rationalism still make so liberal use of the 
ghost stick, what a shadow it must have cast in the 
pedagogy of our primitive forbears! A very crude 
example of such methods occurs in a Pueblo custom. 
"Older members of the village would disguise them- 
selves in ugly masks and call at dwellings at which there 
were children, and frighten them by threats of punish- 
ment or death. " ^^ The masks of course impersonated 
hostile and dangerous powers. In Fiji, ''grim, immodest 
representations of the human figure, about eighteen 
inches long, are used on the larger islands to terrify 
the children into quietness. " ^ ^ Among the Nandi, 

"if a son refuses to obey his father in any serious matter, 
the father solemnly strikes the son with his fur mantle. 
This is equivalent to a most serious curse, and is supposed 
to be fatal to the son, unless he obtains forgiveness, which 
he can only do by sacrificing a goat before his father." ^^ 

Masaba youth are inclined to independence, but may 
be brought up with a round turn by the parental author- 
ity, largely because of the belief in the awful power of 
a father's curse, kutsuha.^^ Through the deliberate 
fostering of such superstitious fears in childhood, 
religion and the mores acquire an enormous purchase 
upon the individual mind, so that it works almost 
automatically along a groove of acquiescent accept- 
ance. The Australians offer a capital example. 

'^ Fynn, /. c, 148; for similar methods among the Zunis, see Gushing, 
Primitive Motherhood, 2>7' '^ Williams and Calvert, /. c, 140. 

^8 Johnston, Uganda, ii., 879. 

^9 Purvis, Uganda to Mt. Elgon, 290-1; cf. Johnston, Lion and Dragon, 
319- 



iQO Primitive Family and Education 

"We find our Blacks, male and female," says Curr, 
"submitting for years loyally and without exception to a 
number of irksome restraints, especially in connection with 
food, just as we Roman Catholics do to the fasts and 
abstinences imposed by the church. Now the question 
is, what is the hidden power which secures the Black's 
scrupulous compliance with custom in such cases? What 
is it, for instance which prompts the hungry Black boy, 
when out hunting with the White man, to refuse (as I have 
often seen him do) to share in a meal of emu flesh, or in 
some other sort of food forbidden to those of his age, when 
he might easily do so without fear of detection by his 
tribe? What is it that makes him so faithfully observant 
of many trying customs? My reply is that the constraining 
power in such cases is not government, whether by chief 
or council, but education-, that the Black is educated from 
infancy in the belief that departure from the customs of his 
tribe is inevitably followed by one at least of many evils, 
such as becoming early grey, ophthalmia, skin eruptions, 
or sickness; but, above all, that it exposes the offender to 
the danger of death from sorcery/ '^° 

Such facts need no exegesis. 

Harsh Discipline. — ^The rod and other means more 
tangible than ghosts were frequently invoked as sanc- 
tions to good conduct. Father Boscan says of the 
Southern California Indians that the perverse child 
was invariably destroyed.''^ On the other hand, 
among the natives of Rotuma, castigation is unknown ; 
the sole method of correcting children is by laughing and 

»°Curr, The Australian Race, i., 54-5; cf. Fison and Howitt, Kami- 
laroi and Kurnai, 256-7; also, H. Spencer, Autobiography, ii., 354-5. 
" Quoted by Bancroft, N. R., i., 414. 



Methods of Primitive Education 191 

making fun of them.^^; Taylor once saw a man in 
New Zealand whose child was very troublesome in 
church, take him up and run out with him to a river 
close by, in which he kept ducking him until he ceased 
crying. ^3 Use of the rod varies extremely. Among 
the Massim of British New Guinea *'when naughty, 
children of either sex are gently beaten by their mother 
upon the cheeks or shoulders, never upon the buttocks, 
though sometimes a stick may be used. """^ Certain 
West Africans are somewhat more severe. "From 
the tenth year the discipline becomes more severe, lashes 
rain upon it if it commits a fault or fails to do its part 
of the common work.''^^ According to the Codex 
Mendoza, the Aztecs were even more severe. One pic- 

'^ Gardiner, xxvii. J. A. I., 408. 

=»3 Te Ika a Maui, 338; similar method among the Aleuts and Itau: 
see Ploss, loc. ciL, ii., 339; Reclus, loc. ciL, 51. 

*4 Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea, 706. 

25 Dowd, The Negro Races, 142 (after Foa). While we are discussing 
savage corporal discipline it may not be amiss to remind ourselves that 
it remained for the Russians of the sixteenth century to interpret the 
ancient Hebrew proverb in terms of kill or cure. 

"The children were treated no better than the wife. 'The more 
religious a father was,' says Professor Kostomaroff, 'the more he was 
penetrated by Greek orthodoxy, the more severely he treated his 
children as the doctrines of his church commanded.'" Sylvester, one 
of the highest dignitaries of the Russian Church, taught the orthodox 
Christians of his times (in his ethical work Domostroj): 

"Spare not your child from blows, for if you beat him with the rod he 
will not die, but be all the sounder for it ; in pounding his body you save 
his soul from death. Out of love for your son increase his wounds, that 
you may have joy in him. Allow him no freedom in his youth but 
break his ribs so long as he grows. Let your anger burst upon your 
daughter that you may preserve her body pure; she must obey and have 
no will of her own." (W. G. Simkhowitsch, Die Feldgemeinschaft in 
Russland, 362.) 



192 Primitive Family and Education 

tiire represents a father punishing his eleven year old 
son by holding him over the fumes of burning chile, 
while the mother does the same with her daughter. 
A bad twelve year old boy was also punished by tying 
his hands and feet and exposing him naked on damp 
ground a whole day. From other sources we learn 
that children when eight years old were 

"merely shown the instruments of punishment as a warn- 
ing. At ten, boys who were disobedient or rebellious 
were bound hand and foot and pricked in different parts 
of the body with thorns of the maguey; girls were only 
pricked in the hands and wrists; if this did not suffice they 
were beaten with sticks.'* "Liars had thorns thrust into 
their lips; and sometimes if the fault was frequent their 
lips were slightly split. "^^ 

The most common faults which correction was de- 
signed to uproot seem in general to have been greedi- 
ness and refusal to work, though sometimes the list 
includes impudence, forwardness, and disobedience. "^ ^ 
Puberty Ceremonies. — By all odds the most dramatic 
episodes in the life of savage youth cluster about pu- 
berty ceremonies and those initiation rites which usher 
him into tribal maturity. Into them are concentrated 
drill, exhortation, and vivid illustration. In fact they 
might well be considered the epitome of primitive in- 
struction, a bit of pageantry in which the whole range 
of tribal thought and practice is reviewed. Coming at 

»« Bancroft, N. R,, ii., 242, 246. 

27PI0SS, ii., 337; Dorsey, Bur, EtJin., iii., 268; Man, xii. /. A. I., 
93; Sumner in a MS. note from Blumentritt on the Igorots of Pan- 
gasinan. 



Methods of Primitive Education 193 

a period in life when imagination and feeling are at 
high-water mark, their impress is indelible. Whether 
they reasoned it out or not, primitive men here hit 
upon a pedagogic device of matchless importance, but 
one which we imfortunately have suffered largely to go 
by the board. The long fasts, vigils, and bodily tor- 
ments, together with the natural excitement attend- 
ant upon participating in a whole series of mimetic 
representations tended to produce in the youth a condi- 
tion of extreme sensitiveness, hyperaesthesia, a seed bed 
favorable to the sowing of seeds of discipline and 
control. 

Take first the puberty ceremonies. Both boys, and 
even more frequently girls, are subjected to them. *' At 
puberty the life of an African may be said to begin, and 
the ceremonies that are connected with initiation 
into manhood are both elaborate and protracted. **^^ 
Before and during puberty ceremonies children are 
frequently put through severe endurance tests. Among 
the Sifan, a tribe at the headwaters of the Yanktse 
River, boys at fifteen are initiated with tortures under 
the eyes of the chief and lamas. So scorned and 
abused is the boy if he manifests pain, that he may 
commit suicide. If he passes this ordeal, a trial of 
hunger follows. Then he is given weapons and must 
forthwith prove his prowess as himter or warrior. ="' 
Among the Sioux it was a custom 

**that when a boy was bom his brother must plunge into 
the water, or roll in the snow naked if it was winter time; 
and if he was not big enough to do either of these himself 

»8 Rev. J. Macdonald, xix. /. A. 7., 268. 
»9 W. J. Reid, in Cosmopolitan^ xxviii., 450. 
13 



194 Primitive Family and Education 

water was thrown on him. If the new-born had a sister 
she must be immersed. The idea was that a warrior had 
come to camp, and the other children must display some 
act of hardihood."3o 

The Uaraycus of the Amazon River to try the fortitude of 
their maidens "hang them in a net to the roof of a hut, 
exposed to continual smoke, where they fast as long as 
they can possibly bear it. The youths are flogged for the 
same purpose."^' The Macusis of Guiana prescribe a 
puberty test to the youths who wish to participate in the 
Paiwari feast. The medicine men apply a machine con- 
taining ants to the body of the candidate perhaps twenty 
times. If he cries out from their vicious biting he is 
excluded. ^^ The entrance of boys into the ranks of 
manhood is by no means easy in British Guiana, writes 
Schomburgk. 

**They must first submit to several tests to prove their 
manly qualities and strength. These tests consist chiefly 
in bearing severe slashings of the flesh of their breasts and 
arms with wild boars' tusks or toucan-bills. If the lad 
bears up under this test without betraying any sign of his 
suffering, he takes his place thenceforward among the men. 
But if his youthful heart should not yet be able to repress 
by strength of will the witness of his pain, he must return 
once more to his old estate until some futiire test proves 
his heightened self-control. "^^ 

Among the Siciatl of British Columbia both boys and girls 
are secluded at puberty in cubicles, under supervision of 
old men and women. 

3" Eastman, /. c, 4; cf. Nelson, /. c, 41; Dorsey, Bur. Ethn., iii., 266; 
Starr, Am. Ind., 129; Ploss, ii., 4, citation from Ahh6 Domenech. 

3iMarkham, xxiv. /. A. I., 280. 33 Appun, in 18 Globus, 301. 

33 Briiisch-Guiana, i., 168. 



Methods of Primitive Education 195 

"The occasion of their seclusion was taken advantage of 
by the elders to instruct them in the several duties and 
responsibilities of man and womanhood. They were made 
to eat and drink very sparingly throughout the whole 
period of their seclusion; the object of this on the part 
of the boy being to fit him for the privations of the hunter's 
life, and to prevent him from developing a lustful tempera- 
ment and interfering with other men's wives. On the 
part of the girl, it was to prevent her from becoming a 
greedy and gluttonous woman, who would seek to rob her 
husband of the choicest portions of their food. To teach 
them industrious habits the girl was employed in plucking 
the needles from a fir branch one at a time, or in picking 
yarn and in spinning; the boy in making arrows and other 
masculine objects." ^"^ 

Among certain Salish tribes of the same region, girls but not 
boys are secluded at puberty ; certain taboos on food, and 
the learning of mat- and basket-making, are prescribed. ^^ 
The Manhes of Madeira used to prepare their youth for 
citizenship and marriage by a series of horrible ant-biting 
tests and bow-and-arrow practice up to their fourteenth 
year, by which time they were supposed to bear their 
pains without a sign.^^ When an Awemba (Lake 
Tanganika district, Africa) girl reaches nubility, 

** she is initiated at a dance called the chisunga, which 
corresponds to the unyago of the Yaos, without the con- 
comitant immoral practices. But the girls are not isolated 
for a month in huts built in the bush, as among the Yaos, 
since the ceremonies take place inside a hut in the village, 

34 Hill Tout, xxxiv. J. A. I., 32. 

3s Hill Tout, xxxiv. 7. A. I., 319-20; cf. Gibbs, /. c, 212. 
3<5 Spix and Martius, Brasilien, 1320; same description in von Martius' 
Beitrdge, i., 403-4. 



196 Primitive Family and Education 

and last several months. Inside this hut dancing is kept 
up, and the girls are instructed in the elementary facts of 
life." 

Praises of olden time midwives and exhortations to 
obey their future husbands, together with old saws 
urging modesty and decent dress, comprise most of 
the instruction. ^7 Bechuana girls are not allowed to 
sleep during their puberty rites. They are compelled 
to sit upright on a rough wooden block so fashioned that 
if they attempt to lie down or keel over asleep they 
lose their balance and tumble off. An observer adds, 
" Die Hauptzweck dieser Ceremonie ist die Abhartung der 
Jugend. "^* Among the Wagogo of German East Africa, 
considerable education goes along with circumcision in 
their puberty rites. Both sexes are included. "Stub- 
born, disobedient youths get thrashed unmercifully by 
their instructors, but they have to grin and bear it." 
Certain bathing ceremonies follow; the proceedings wind 
up with drinking and dancing. The lads are warned "that 
they must n*t be in a hurry in paying their advances to 
the opposite sex." The girls are secluded and undergo 
a course of instruction, "some of which is good and some 
bad." To the good side must be put down instruction 
in cooking. 39 Apparently the only tribal ceremony in 
Nyassaland is the initiation dance for boys and girls of 
marriageable age."*" Among the Malays, adolescence 
ceremonies are not confined to the age of puberty, but 
begin sometimes much earlier. They include circumcision, 

37 Sheane, xxxvi. J. A. I., 155-6. This is a puberty ceremony rather 
than initiation. 

38 Holub, Siehen Jahre in Siid Afrika, i., 484-5. 

39 Rev. H. Cole, xxxii. J. A. /., 308-9. 

4° Moggridge, xxxii. J. A. I., 470. This case illustrates again the fre- 
quent interchangeability of the terms "puberty rite" and "initiation." 



Methods of Primitive Education 197 

tooth-filing or chipping, ear-boring, accompanied by 
purificatory rites, lights, banquets, music, and dancing/^ 
The Andamanese have a sort of puberty initiation for 
both boys and girls, consisting chiefly in fasts, absti- 
nence from turtle, honey, pork, fish, and other favorite 
foods, lasting from one to five years. 

"As at present understood, the a-ka-ya-ba is regarded as 
a test of the endurance or, more properly speaking, of the 
self-denial of young persons, and as affording evidence of 
their fitness and ability to support a family."^' 

In Borneo, Ling Roth says: 

"The women often prove the courage and endurance of 
the youngster by placing a lighted ball of tinder on the 
arm, and letting it burn into the skin. The marks thus 
produced run along the forearm from the wrist in a straight 
line, and are much valued by the young men as so many 
proofs of their power of endurance." ''^ 

"^ Skeat, Malay Magic, 352-361. 42 Man, xii. J, A. I., 130. 

43 Nat. of Sarawak, ii., 81. Further references on puberty rites: In 
general: Webster, Prim. Secret Soc, 47, etc.; G. Stanley Hall, Adoles- 
cence, chap, xiii.; Of boys: Bagge, xxxiv. J. A. I., 168-9; Crawley, M. 2?., 
294 Jf.; Torday and Joyce, xxxvi. /. A. I., 46; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii., 
216; id., Totemism and Exogamy, i., 36 ff.; Guise, xxviii. J. A. I., 
207; Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 102 ff.; Tate, xxxiv. J. A. I., 
133; Teit, Thompson R. Indians, 295 ff.; von Martius, Beitrdge, i., 11 1; 
Parkinson, Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr., ii., 36; Gray, ihid., vii., 229-30; 
Zaborowski, "La circoncision, ses origines et sa repartition en Afrique," 
in L'Anthropologie, vii., 653-75; Leprince, in L'Anthropologie, xvi., 
59; Lafargue, Bulletins de la Soc. d'Anthropol. de Paris, 420-36; Lippert, 
ii., 341 ff.; Of girls: Amer. Anthropol., n. s., iii., 633; iv., 283; Fritsch, 
Die Eingehorene, etc., iii ff.; Guise, xxviii. J. A. I., 215; Haarhoff, 
Bantu-Stdmme Siid-Afrikas, 27, ^o-^; Johnston, Uganda, li., 753, 827, 
833, 864; Miss Kingsley, W. A. S., 531; Koch, "Die Guaikurustamme, " 
in 81 Globus, 45; Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 296-7; Loskiel, /. c, 56-7; McGee, 



198 Primitive Family and Education 

Puberty and Initiation. — One reason for the im- 
portance of puberty ceremonies is, perhaps, that pu- 
berty is one of the few definite milestones of life to 
peoples who keep but the crudest of calendars. To 
such, anniversaries are impossible. We are told that 
the Kafir child has but one birthday in his lifetime. 
Since very often the child is not conceived as having 
a real existence until long after its birth, it is altogether 
natural to shift forward the real beginnings of real 
life till the somatic and psychic crisis of puberty can be 
observed and celebrated. Hence the difficulty in 
separating the mass of taboos, etc., connected with sex 
maturity from the ceremonies of initiation which mark 
and usher in tribal and social maturity. As a matter 
of practice they are usually coterminous, but with these 
exceptions, that generally girls are not initiated, and 
that initiation of boys is not accomplished instanter 
and once for all, but is a lifelong process. For ex- 
ample, Ling Roth observed that among the Queens- 
land aborigines there were four stages through which all 
initiates must pass. *' It may be years, even up to old 
age, before all the social stages are reached. "^4 This 
statement applies pretty generally to the Australian 
tribes. 4 5 But ordinarily the initiation at once in- 

"Seri Indians," Bur. Ethn., xvii., 10; Parkinson, Intern. Archiv /. 
Ethnogr., ii., 32-3; Pector, Intern. A.f. Ethnogr., v., 219; Powers, Calif. 
Ind., I. c, 85, 235-6, 250; Spix and Martins, /. c., 1187; von Martins, 
/. c, i., 390, 402, 428, 510-11, 599, 644; No puberty rites: Maori, Tregear, 
xix. /. ^. /., 99; Solomon Isl., Somerville, xxvi. J. A. I., 407; Anthropos^ 
ii., 1029-56; iii., 19-31; v., 454-6; Amer. Anthropologist, x., 215 Jf.; Jour. 
Amer. Folk-lore, xxL, 37-9; Jour. Afr. Soc, ix., 360-87. 

44 Ethnol. Studies among Queensland Aborigines, 169. 

45 Cf. Curr, Australian Race, i., 72. Among certain Africans of the 
Guinea Coast the initiation requires three years, during which the youth 



Methods of Primitive Education 199 

troduced the candidate into full-fledged participation 
in the tribal life. We must remember the early age at 
which primitive economic independence is attained, and 
also the extremely low age of nubility and marriage. 

Initiation Ceremonies. — We cannot accoimt pre- 
cisely for all the details of these savage ceremonies, 
sometimes grotesque, sometimes disgusting, some- 
times inimical to life and limb. But in general they 
reduce to some form of physical testing, pulverizing 
the will of the initiate, inducing a hyper-impression- 
ability; to inculcating tribal mores and tradition; 
to instruction in industrial arts; to some sort of sym- 
bolism portraying death to the life of childhood 
and sexlessness; to some form of sympathetic magic 
for carrying out all these aims. The initiation cere- 
monies are usually accomplished under the direction of the 
tribal elders, priests, or secret societies. Note particu- 
larly that these are in every case tribal and not domestic 
agencies. Professor Hutton Webster in his compre- 
hensive study of primitive secret societies finds that 
initiation by tribal elders usually includes: The 
isolation of the initiates, their rigid exclusion some- 
times for a long period from the women and children; 
their subjection to certain ordeals and rites designed to 
change their entire natures; the utilization of this 
period of confinement to convey to the novices a 
knowledge of the tribal traditions and customs; the 
inculcation by most practical methods of habits of re- 
spect and obedience to the older men.^^/ Mr. Howitt 

is secluded under care and instruction of special elders: see Chevrier, in 
V Anthropologie, xvii., 372-3. 

46 Prim. Secret Soc, 32 ; cf. Crawley, M. R., 294. 



200 Primitive Family and Education 

in a study of the initiation ceremonies of the Kumai 
names the following five rules of conduct to be observed 
by the neophytes : To listen to and obey the old men ; 
to share everything they have with their friends; to live 
peaceably with their friends ; not to interfere with girls 
or married women; to obey the food restrictions imtil 
they are released from them by the old men.47 I 
am inclined to find in these rites something more than 
a mere change from mother-right to father-right in the 
care and control of the male child. "^^ It means that, 
but rather by way of stamping the insignia of sex than 
a mere transfer of authority. Still more does it signify 
the change from a domestic to a broader societal econo- 
my in the youth's life. Surely there would have been 
no need for all this elaborate paraphernalia with its 
rigorous educational aspect if it were designed merely 
to supplant maternal as against paternal authority. 
This distinction is perfectly illustrated by the Kurnai 
initiation, of which Howitt says: 

"It formed a bond of peculiar strength, binding together 
all the contemporaries of the various clans of the Kurnai. 
It was a brotherhood including all the descendants of the 
eponymous male and female ancestors, Yeerung and 
Djeetgun." 

And all the youths who have gone through the Jeraeil 
at the same time '*are brothers, and in the future address 
each other's wives as 'wife,' and each other's children 

47 J. A. /., xiv., 316; see also Matthews, "Initiation Ceremonies of 
the Wiradjuri Tribes," in Am. Anthrop., iii., n. s., 337-41; Curr, 
Austral. Race, i., 71-2; Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, i., 38 j^. 

<8 As Mr. Webster holds, /. c, 21 ; cf. Lippert, ii., 343-4. 



Methods of Primitive Education 201 

as 'child.' "^9 These notions of tribal solidarity and 
brotherhood appear strongly marked in other peoples. 
To the Elema (of the Papuan Gulf) initiation is all 
important, says the Rev. J. Holmes. 

"On the performance of the instructions he received as an 
initiate the social and moral welfare of his tribe depends; 
as an individual he is only a unit of his tribe, but as such 
he must always conduct himself in all things for the highest 
interests of his tribe. The knowledge he acquired when an 
initiate must ever be to him a sacred possession, and not 
to be imparted to the uninitiated." 

With this tribe, initiation is a long series of steps. It 
is true that after it begins the father's influence takes 
the ascendant, but it is essentially a tribal affair. The 
father's announcement of his son's initiation feasts is 
"a declaration to the tribe. "5° 

Examples of Initiation. — With these general notions 
in view, we may now add a few illustrations. The 
Tuscarora Indians put their young men through a 
terrific ordeal called the husquenaugh. The ceremony 
was extremely severe, disgusting, and apparently 
senseless in its cruelty. 

** There is one abominable custom amongst them, which 
they call husquenawing their young men, which I have 
not made any mention of as yet. . . You must know, that 
most commonly, once a year, at farthest, once in two 
years, these people take up so many of their young men, 
as they think are able to undergo it, and husquenaugh 
them, which is to make them obedient and respective to 
their superiors, and, as they say, is the same to them as 

49 Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 198-9. so /, ^, /.^ xxxii., 418. 



202 Primitive Family and Education 

it is to us to send our children to school, to be taught good 
breeding and letters. This house of correction is a large 
cabin, made on purpose for the reception of the young 
men and boys, that have not passed the graduation al- 
ready ; and it is always at Christmas that they husquenaugh 
their youth, which is by bringing them into this house and 
keeping them dark all the time, where they more than 
half starve them. Besides they give them pellitory bark, 
and several intoxicating plants, that make them go raving 
mad as ever were any people in the world; and you may 
hear them make the most dismal and hellish cries and 
howlings that ever human creatures expressed: all which 
continues about five or six weeks, and the little meat they 
eat, is the nastiest, loathsome stuff, and mixt with all 
manner of filth it is possible to get. After the time is 
expired, they are brought out of the cabin, which is never 
in the town but always a distance off, and guarded by a 
jailor or two, who watch by turn. Now when they first 
come out, they are as poor as ever any creatures were; 
for you must know several die under this diabolical pur- 
gation. Moreover, they either really are, or pretend to be 
dumb, and do not speak for several days, I think, twenty 
or thirty, and look so ghastly, and are so changed, that it 
is next to an impossibility to know them again, although 
you was never so well acquainted with them before. I 
would fain have gone into the mad house, and have seen 
them in their time of purgatory, but the king (sic !) would not 
suffer it, because, he told me that they would do me or 
any other white man an injury, that ventured in amongst 
them, so I desisted. They play this prank with girls as 
well as boys, and I believe it a miserable life they endure, 
because I have known several of them to run away at this 
time to avoid it. Now the savages say if it was not for 
this, they could never keep their youth in subjection, 
besides that it hardens them ever after to the fatigues of 



Methods of Primitive Education 203 

war, hunting, and all manner of hardship, which their 
way of living exposes them to. Besides, they add, that 
it carries oflE those infirm weak bodies, that would have 
been only a burden and disgrace to their nation, and 
saves the victuals and clothing for better people that would 
have been expended on such useless creatures." ^^ 

Among the Delawares, young boys were 

" prepared in a most singular manner for the station they 
are intended to fill in the future, with a view to form a 
judgment of their capacity. They are made to fast so 
often and so long, that their bodies become emaciated, their 
minds deranged, and their dreams wild and extravagant. 
Frequent questions are put to them on this occasion, 
till they have had, or pretended to have had a dream, 
declared to be ominous. The subject being minutely 
considered and interpreted, they are solemnly informed 
what will be their future destination. The impression 
thus made upon their minds is lasting, and the older they 
grow, the more earnestly they strive to fulfil their desti- 
nation considering themselves as men of peculiar gifts, 
far exceeding all others. "^^ 

Every male Zufii child "must receive involuntary initia- 
tion at the age of four or five years and voluntary 
initiation at ten or twelve years into the society of the 
Kok-ko, in order to be admitted after death into the 
great Dance-house in Kothluwalawa."^^ Mr. Spencer 

s^ John Lawson, History of North Carolina, 380-2. The Mandan 
Indians put their young men through a no less severe and revolting 
initiation. See Catlin, North American Indians, i., 169-76. 

s* Loskiel, 63. 

S3 M. C. Stevenson, "Zuiii Ancestral Gods and Masks," Am. Anthro- 
poL, xi., no. ii., 39; see also the curious Tusayan initiation ceremony 
described by Fewkes, Bur. Ethn., xv., 283-4, 3^8. 



204 Primitive Family and Education 

found the elaborate initiatory ceremonies of the Pueb- 
los to form the larger part of their purposeful edu- 
cation, s"* West African 

*'boys are exercised so as to become inured to hardship; 
in some districts they make raids so as to perfect them- 
selves in this useful accomplishment. They always 
take a new name, and are supposed by the initiation 
process to become new beings in the magic wood, and on 
their return to their village at the end of the course, they 
pretend to have entirely forgotten their life before they 
entered the wood; but the pretence is not kept up beyond 
the period of festivities given to welcome them home. 
They all learn, to a certain extent, a new language, a secret 
language only understood by the initiated." ^^ 

Werner says of British Central Africa that in many tribes 
''the only systematic teaching of any sort is that given 
at the mysteries . . . the boys are given advice 
about the conduct of life, and instructed in the tradi- 
tions of the tribe. " ^6 Among the South African tribes 
observed by Rev. J. Macdonald, youths are secluded, 
must steal their meat, are punished for clumsiness, 
forced to dance and nin violently, are kept awake, and 
beaten with rods. In the course of this rigorous treat- 
ment many die. ^^ In Australia Howitt says: 

** The intention of all that is done at this ceremony is to 
make a momentous change in the boy's life. ... He is 
now to be a man, instructed in and sensible of the duties 

54 Educ. of the Pueblo Child, 82. 
s^ Miss Kingsley, Travels **« PT. ^., 531. 
5*5 British Central Africa, 124. 

5T J. A. I., xix., 268; cf. note on the Tuscaroras for social selection of 
the fit; also, Curr, Austral. Race, i., 72. 



Methods of Primitive Education 205 

which devolve upon him as a member of the Murring 
community. . . . The ceremonies are intended to impress 
and terrify the boy in such a manner that the lesson may be 
indelible and may govern the whole of his future life. . . . 
The ceremonies are also intended to rivet the influence and 
power of the old men on the novices." ^^ 

It is at this time that the very complicated laws 
relating to class and totemic divisions, on which the 
marriage system rests, are brought to the novice's 
attention. In various localities the program includes 
the sacred songs of the tribes, native games, dancing 
certain corroborees forbidden to the uninitiated, lore 
and traditions of the tribes, tribal boundaries, reasons 
for ancient feuds, and a sort of rough pragmatic geog- 
raphy indicating friendly and hostile districts; the 
whole being sometimes conducted in a secret language 
taught to the initiate and used only among the initiate. ^^ 
Professor Haddon found similar subjects and methods 
in the initiatory rites of Torres Straits tribes. ^° In 
Melanesia Codrington found, it is true, no initiation or 
*' making of young men, "but he did find "entrance into 
various societies," whose functions, as nearly as we 
can make out, correspond to tribal initiation. ^^ In 
certain tribes, initiation is a season of immoral practices 
and sex license, e.g., among natives of Kiwai Island and 

sSHowitt, N. T. of S. E. A., 532-3; cf. Spencer and Gillen, N. T. of 
C.A., 212-30; Bundock, Intern. Archivf. Ethnogr., ii., 53; Semon, In the 
Aust. Bush, 231. 

59 Matthews, xxxiii. J. A. I., 269. 

•^o Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr., vi., 131 ff., 140 ff.; cf. Pector, same 
publication, v., 219. 

^^ Melanesians, 233, also various places in chap. v. 



2o6 Primitive Family and Education 

the Bugilai of New Guinea ^^; yet even these apparent 
irregularities probably contain a secret ceremonial sig- 
nificance. In any event, they do not comprise the 
whole machinery of initiation, and in many cases the 
whole tone of the ceremonies is distinctly opposed to sex 
license. 

One final case must close this series. We have 
selected it because it illustrates several points, viz., the 
aims of the ceremonies, their duration, the content, 
method, and personnel of instruction, and its barbarous 
excrescences. 

Elema boys when candidates for initiation are called 
malai-asu or heava, and are secluded in a special building, 
the eravo. The reasons assigned for this seclusion are 
"that when boys reach the age of puberty, they ought not 
to be exposed to the rays of the sun, lest they suffer thereby ; 
they must not do heavy manual work, or their physical 
development will be stopped; all possibility of mixing 
with females must be avoided, lest they become immoral, 
or illegitimacy become common in the tribe." 

The boy's own mother must not be seen by him and must 
cough or make some distinctive noise when she approaches 
to leave him food, so that he may have time to retire within 
the eravo. Seclusion does not mean utter incarceration as in 
the husquenaugh; for the boys are allowed occasionally 
to take the air; but on such walks they are under a bond 
of silence and must avoid going near their homes and the 
possibility of being' recognized by their female relatives. 
They must observe certain arbitrary food taboos. Whilst 
observing these taboos, 

"they are instructed by the old man who resided con- 
stantly with them as their instructor and adviser, in all 
^« Rev. Jas. Chalmers, xxxiii. /. A. /., 109, 119, 124. 



Methods of Primitive Education 207 

matters pertaining to taboo recognized by their tribe. 
They learn the seasons that are closed against certain 
kinds of fish, and the times when certain kinds of food and 
fruit are to be reserved for coming feasts ; so that when they 
leave the eravo they are quite qualified in such matters to 
look after their own property and to care for the best 
interests of their tribe. The occupations of the heava, 
during their confinement in the eravOy are, of necessity, 
few, and take the form of pastimes rather than work of a 
serious and important nature. Plaiting armlets and girdles, 
preparing paper mulberry for si's or genital coverings such 
as are worn by the men, making combs and headdresses 
for future use, are the principal forms of work. . . . 
It is during this period that they receive such information 
as is calculated to equip them for all the duties and obliga- 
tions of citizens and worthy members of their tribe. From 
their guardian they receive all kinds of advice respecting 
their duty to their tribe; this must always take the first 
place in all their actions; the enemies of the tribe must 
be the enemy of the individual initiate ; it will be to the best 
interests of the tribe that it should be so. In selecting 
a wife, the first thing to be considered is the interests 
of the tribe, whether she is likely to bear children ; 
on the other hand, if she proves to be barren, the obligation 
of the husband to the wife ceases, because she cannot bear 
him children, i.e., because she is not contributing to the 
strength of the tribe. Whatever serves the highest interests 
of the tribe is justifiable. ** 

It is this measuring rod that declares to the initiate that 
illicit intercourse is wrong, that infanticide may be right, 
that survival of the fittest is the summum honum. Further- 
more, sorcery being an important element in Elema life, 
is included in the course of heava instruction, "not with a 
view of making them sorcerers, but to impress on their 



2o8 Primitive Family and Education 

minds how great is the power of sorcerers." The succeeding 
stage of initiation is known as heapu; the seclusion is some- 
what relaxed, but the initiates are not allowed to mix with 
their relatives or to sleep at home. During this period they 
meet the semese or fighting men of the tribe, "from whom 
they receive every incentive to become warriors. ** Finally 
there are certain endurance tests that each heapu must 
pass before he is considered eligible to become a semese. 
*'0f these the most important tests are, chewing upe 
(the root of the ginger plant), and drinking the urine of 
the semese chief." The wind-up of the whole affair is the 
feast at which the heapu at last becomes a full-fledged 
semese and is entrusted with its mysteries ; but this mystery 
feast is really an anticlimax and frequently disappoints 
the candidates. Its educational significance is nil compared 
with the preceding stages. ^^ 

Play. — Play enters as an important element into 
these various ceremonies, pubic rites, initiations, and 
endurance tests. They become nearly always a public 
festival, and a festival is essentially play. These great 
public plays in addition to their service as an education- 
al device were of the highest value as a societal bond; 
both literally and figuratively they served to em- 
phasize the tribal brotherhood. But aside from this 
public and communal aspect, play marked every feature 
of savage life. I am not sure that we can say that it 
occupied a larger place among primitive men than with 
ourselves, for it is difficult to determine exactly how 
much play spirit enters into the modem scholar's or 
business man's everyday affairs; but this much is 
certain, that in savagery the lives of both man and child 

^3 Holmes, xxxii. J, A. I., 418-25. 



Methods of Primitive Education 209 

were cast largely in a mold of play. It is a curious 
commentary on the primitive r61e of play to find in 
Baegert's old book on the Indians of Lower California 
that their language was utterly deficient in abstract 
terms and lacked words for the most rudimentary 
human relationships ; that even the parts of the body 
were without names ; but the verb to play existed in a 
complete conjugation, and, oddly enough, is the only 
detailed bit of the Waicuri language which has been 
preserved to us/^ If, as Miss Appleton thinks, ^^ 
play is a real hunger, then primitive peoples were 
ever hungry. 

We accept the theory that play is an imperious 
instinct but are here concerned rather with its definite 
educational, rather than its biologic aspect. We have 
already seen how, in the lowest stages of culture, learn- 
ing was accomplished by bare tmdirected imitation; 
and how among higher peoples imitation became con- 
scious, selective, directed. In both cases, however, the 
major part of the result came about through playful 
imitation. It was largely anticipatory play. The old 
custom of hanging miniature toy-weapons over the 
baby's cradle was a very definite attempt at directed 
anticipatory play, mixed perhaps with a bit of magic. 
For example, in Lapland bows and arrows or a lance 
were hung over the cradles of boys "to teach them even 
in the cradle what ought to be their employment during 
their lives" ; over girls they hung wings, feet, and bill of 
the jopos bird "to insinuate to them from their infancy 

'^ Pp. 394/. 

<^s A Comparative Study of the Play Activities of Adult Savages and 
Civilized Children, (Chicago, 19 lo), ^^ ff. 
X4 



210 Primitive Family and Education 

the advantages of neatness and agility. "^^ The 
Guarani of South America, and the Sioux and Algon- 
quins presented their infant boys with bows and arrows, 
and the girls also with suggestions of their future em- 
ployments/ ^ Similarly in old Mexico four days after 
the birth of a child, a festival was prepared at which the 
child was undressed and, with a certain ritual, washed. 
"It was then that the toy instruments of war or craft 
or household labour were placed in the boy*s or girl's 
hand (a custom singularly corresponding with one in 
China). '* ^^ Later the child used, or was taught to use, 
these infant gifts in such a way as to focus on his future 
occupations. Pueblo parents gave their children dolls 
representing their deities and guided their games with 
them, so that the child early learned to recognize many 
of their gods. 

"Like the plays of children everywhere," says Spencer, 
"those of the Pueblo children are symbolical; spontaneous 
imitation of the more serious work of their elders prevails 
and is truly educational, as it prepares the way for the 
later life into which they are to enter. But very early, 
even the plays, unconsciously to the children, are directed 
by the parent. The principal occupations of the Pueblos, 
such as agriculture, hunting, pottery and implement making, 
weaving, and building, are all imitated in the plays of the 
children. "«9 

'^'^ Pinkerton, i., i68; cf. Codrington, Melanesians, 280, for another 
expression of a similar notion; also for the Zuni Indians, Gushing, 
Primitive Motherhood, 33. ^7 Ploss, ii., 325. 

^^Tylor, P. C, ii., 436; similarly, the Lindu of Africa, Johnston, 
Uganda, ii., 553; also the Baganda, xxxii. /. A. I., 30; also the Suaheli, 
H. Krauss, "Spielzeug der Suahelikinder, " Globus, ^2, 357 Jf. 

^9 Educ. of the Pueblo Child, 77. 



Methods of Primitive Education 211 

I consider the case of the Pueblos exceptional, and that 
the play of savage children was usually purely sponta- 
neous, without even this measure of parental interfer- 
ence. Eastman's boyhood among the Sioiix is far more 
typical. 

" Our sports were molded by the life and customs of our 
people; indeed, we practiced only what we expected to do 
when grown. Our games were feats with the bow and 
arrow, foot and pony races, wrestling, swimming, and 
imitation of the customs and habits of our fathers. We 
had sham fights with mud balls and willow wands; we 
played lacrosse, made war upon bees, shot winter arrows 
(which were used only in that season), and coasted upon 
the ribs of animals and buffalo robes." 7° 

The exceeding definiteness of such plays indicates that 
direction would have been superfluous, if not nullifying 
to the whole business. Indeed the very motor nature 
of the imitative-play instinct suffices to give it both 
content and direction. ^^ But the content of primitive 
imitation-play was not confined to the mere round of 
domestic occupations. It included, if it did not actu- 
ally depend largely upon, the broader, more spectacular 
activities of the group. War, hrmting, and religious 
ceremonial offered tempting models. 

7° Indian Boyhood^ 64. Cf. Catlin's description of sham fights and 
dances of Mandan Indian boys, North Amer. Ind., i., 131-2. 

7* This accords thoroughly with numerous observations upon the 
lack of compulsion or forcing of attention in primitive education. See 
Lippert, i., 226-8; Letourneau, Uevol. de Veduc, 118; Grasberger, 
Erziehung u. Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum, i®^ Theil, i^ 
Abtheilung, "Die Knabenspiele,"pp. 1-27; see especially Plato's famous 
statement of the doctrine of "playful interest," as against compulsion 
in education, in the Republic, book vii. 



212 Primitive Family and Education 

"Occasionally there was a medicine dance away off in 
the woods where no one could disturb us, in which the boys 
impersonated their elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, 
High Hawk, Medicine Bear, and the rest. They painted 
and imitated their fathers and grandfathers to the minutest 
detail, and accurately too, because they had seen the real 
thing all their lives. "'^ "Among the Siouan tribes, 
as among other Indians, amusements absorbed a consider- 
able part of the time and energy of the old and young of 
both sexes. Among the young, the gambols, races, and 
other sports were chiefly or wholly diversional, and common- 
ly mimicked the avocations of the adults. The girls 
played at the building and care of houses and were absorbed 
in dolls, while the boys played at archery, foot-racing, 
and mimic hunting, which soon grew into the actual 
chase of small birds and animals. Some of the sports of 
the elders were unorganized diversions, leaping, racing, 
wrestling, and other spontaneous expressions of exuberance. 
Certain diversions were controlled by more persistent 
motives, as when the idle warrior occupied his leisure 
in meaningless ornamentation of his garment or tipi, or 
spent hours of leisure in esthetic modification of his weapon 
or ceremonial badge, and to this purposeless activity, 
which engendered design with its own progress, the incipient 
graphic art of the tribes was largely due. The more 
important and characteristic sports were organized and 
interwoven with social organization and belief so as com- 
monly to take the form of elaborate ceremonial, in which 
dancing, feasting, fasting, symbolic painting, song, and 
sacrifice played important parts, and these organized 
sports were largely fiducial. The ceremonial observances 
of the Siouan tribes were not different in kind from those 
of neighboring contemporaries. ... So the sports of the 

73 Eastman, /. c, 3. 



Methods of Primitive Education 213 

Siouan Indians were both diversional and divinatory, 
and the latter were highly organized in a manner reflecting 
the environment of the tribe, their culture-status, their 
belief, and especially their disposition toward bloodshed; 
for their most characteristic ceremonials were connected, 
genetically, if not immediately, with warfare and the 
chase. "^^ 

Magical Plays. — Ritual and magic are so important 
in savagery that literalism commands a premium. 
It is vastly more important that one be able to make 
the exact motions than that one understand their 
precise content and significance. Hence religious 
ceremonial offered a wide field for imitative play, and 
one by no means neglected. 

"Among enlightened peoples games are usually associated 
with sport and recreation. With some primitive peoples 
games are played primarily for divination, but the cere- 
monial games of the Zunis are for the bringing of rain, and 
they constitute an important element in their religious 
and social life. Each game has its regulations and limita- 
tions, and there is a deep meaning underlying such of the 
games as are supposed to have come from the gods. . . . 
The younger Zufii children play the ceremonial games, 
however, with little or no understanding of the occultism 
associated with them."'"* 

But the mere fact of their *' trying on'* the motions was 
the most direct and concrete anticipation imaginable. 

Dancing. — We cannot enter into all the details of 
savage ceremonial play ; but no account, however brief, 
can afford to omit some attention to Dancing. " There 

73 W J McGee, Bur. Ethn., xv., 174-5. 
T* Mrs. Stevenson, Bur. Ethn., xxiii., 317. 



214 Primitive Family and Education 

are three things that are the gift of the Almighty," 
said a cunning old Irish weaver to the poet Yeats, 
"poetry, dancing, and principles." And savage, no 
less than civilized peoples, have accepted the gifts and 
used them abundantly. The dance has ever been a 
strong social bond, a means of social control, and 
therefore an educator. ''It is by dancing alone that, 
among uncultured peoples, joy in common is expressed 
in regard to a happy event which affects the whole 
tribe. " '' In a pueblo, you sum up political discord in 
one word when you say that 'all the people are not 
dancing together.* And when a reconciliation is in 
progress it would be hard to say whether the accom- 
panying dance more truly expresses the movement or 
brings it about. A revival of social solidarity means a 
revival of dancing." ^s But this is not all. Dancing 
becomes not only joyous comment upon what has al- 
ready happened but also a deliberate concerted effort to 
bring things to pass. Thus it often is the preamble to 
war, hunting, and religious observances. In all these 
aspects it turns out to be one of the very strongest 
forces for public order and for the control of public 
opinion. This is of course in direct consequence of the 
stimulating and hypnotic nature of rhythmic motion. 
The peculiar quality of the dance as an agent of control 
is that it affects both the participant and the observer. 
The eye of the adult no less than that of the child 
delights in movement, and distinguishes between mere 
pleasure in motion as such, and pleasure in sensuously 
agreeable movement. The subtle pleasure arising from 

75 Barbara Freire-Marreco, in Sociological Review, iv., 328 (Oct., 
191 1); cf. Deniker, Races oj Man, 207-8; Tylor, Anthropology, 296-7. 



Methods of Primitive Education 215 

watching the flight of swallows, a whirlwind of autumn 
leaves, a flurry of snow, the surging of a holiday shop- 
ping crowd, a group of bare-legged youths in a hurdle 
race, the dextrous passes of a juggler, the graceful steps 
and leaps of a Russian dancer, or a crowd of skaters on 
the ice or in a rink, transcends the mere attention to 
and satisfaction in motion. There are overtones of 
satisfaction ; perhaps we should better say there is a real 
intoxication. It is easy to see the cumulative effect of 
a dance in which a whole tribe takes part; still more 
when, as often happens, several tribes unite. A sort of 
ecstatic state is induced which Groos calls a "state apart 
from the narrow individual sphere, and favourable to 
social affiliation." ^6 B^t the effect often went farther; 
the dance frequently was the diplomatic exchange 
preliminary to forming an alliance^ ^; it played a similar 
role in marriage arrangements. ^^ Whatever has been 
said of primitive dancing applies equally well to primi- 
tive music, for they are identical in origin, and prac- 
tically inseparable in function. It suffices here to point 
out that this most important educational method was 
distinctly beyond the reach of mere family activity; 
that it was one of those products which the group 
creates for its own stability and cohesion. ^^ 

76 Play of Man, 354. 77 Jhid., 355. 78 Llppert, ii., 14, 148. 

79 The Veddahs offer an interesting converse proof of the social im- 
portance of the festival, including music, the dance, feasting, and fasting. 
They occupy perhaps the lowest rung of civilization's ladder; they are 
without formal political organization; they are said to have failed to 
acquire the art of war; are without arts or trade, and subsist by the 
chase; to complete the list of negatives, they are reported as having 
"only feeble suggestions of the festival. " Groos, I. c, 337. 

A further word on the subject of play may not be amiss, especially 



2i6 Primitive Family and Education 

Summary. — To sum up the preceding paragraphs on 
Methods: We find that in the lower culture stages 
undirected imitation, hence self -education, prevails. 
The method of directed or selective imitation is largely 
domestic but also invoked by public or communal 
agencies. Drill, also, is both domestic and public. 
Exhortation in its most effective forms, public. Fear 
and superstition wielded liberally by both. But the 
most important methods of all, ceremonies of initiation 
and tribal festivals, are distinctively public. Finally, 
play in all its forms is largely self -education. This por- 
tion of our study seems to have placed the educational 
emphasis upon group methods, and to have reduced the 

the very practical topic of occupational interest and mental develop- 
ment. The occupation or task that cannot be dramatized is deadening. 
Enough attention has not been given to the interaction of occupation 
and mind growth. The task can deaden the mind, we say; but the 
developed mind can illuminate the task also. Agriculture in its lowest 
stages was spurned by men and relegated as drudgery to women; 
women's minds reflected the lack of interest imposed by an unillumi- 
nated task. The men dramatized the chase and war (which is perhaps 
only man-hunt as Deniker points out); their minds developed in and 
by the process. By and by, the chase failing, or other circumstances 
rendering a sedentary life necessary, men had to resume the task of 
agriculture. But on a higher level; for their minds having attained higher 
development, they could invest the occupation with new qualities. 
For example, they could get beyond the first stages of interest, interest 
in the crop alone as a direct food-accomplishment, i.e., interest in the 
result; they had attained to the second and gradually to the third stage, 
where more and more the process, the technique of means, becomes of 
more interest than the immediate result. This I call a distinct achieve- 
ment. The soil, no longer a sort of penny-in-the-slot arrangement for 
the crudest belly satisfaction, becomes an actor in the great drama of 
agriculture. But such a dramatization of the soil could only have come 
by reason of minds elevated through dramatic interest in previous 
occupations. The illumination of the occupation reacts on the worker's 



Organization of Primitive Education 217 

family, by comparison, to a minimal significance as 
an educative agency. 

ORGANIZATION 

Education a Group Affair. — It should hardly be 
necessary to go into great detail concerning the Organi- 
zation of primitive education, for the various agencies 
at work have already been touched upon in the dis- 
cussions of Content and Methods. It will sufi&ce to 
gather up and clarify these scattered observations. It 
is evident that throughout the whole history of educa- 
tion the group has ever been in the background as the 
silent arbiter of discipline and control. In the lowest 
stages where no conscious education obtains, the educa- 
tive agent is the individual himself, but always with the 

mind, and vice versa, in an endless interplay. What makes a "factory 
hand" is just the lack of this illumination. In this respect the child- 
labor agitators of the early nineteenth century were entirely correct in 
their bitter condemnation of the factory system. Socialism is little 
more than a plea for this opportunity to dramatize toil and make it 
interesting. 

Further references on this paragraph: Boas, "On Certain Songs and 
Dances of the Kwakiutl," Jour. Am. Folklore, i., 49; Dorsey, Bur. 
Ethn., xi., 452 ; Groos, Play of Animals, and Play of Man, various places; 
G. S. Hall, Educ. Rev., xxiil., 438-9; Henderson, Prin. of Educ, 397; 
Jenks, Bontoc Igorot, 65; Johnston, Uganda, ii., 753-4, 833; Lewin, 
Wild Races of S. E. Ind., 201, etc.; Morgan, Anc. Soc, 116-7; Ploss, ii., 
289-322; Purvis, Uganda to ML Elgon, 338; Ratzel, i., 442; Karl Storck, 
Der Tanz; Wallaschek, Primitive Music, 274-8, 291-4; Williams and 
Calvert, Fiji, 129; Lawson, Hist, of N. C, 285; Mooney, Bur. Ethn., xiv., 
part ii., an exhaustive and fascinating study of the Indian Ghost Dance 
and its parallels in other religions; Yone Noguchi, Lafcadio Hearn in 
Japan, 76-9, suggests the importance of the Ghost-Festival-Dance to 
Japanese social life. Dr. L. H. Gulick in his Healthful Art of Dancing, 
which has recently appeared, makes a strong plea for the revival of this 
ancient educational instrument in modern school curricula and methods. 



2i8 Primitive Family and Education 

group as his balance wheel. In the higher stages, 
vocational education is largely domestic; but some- 
times the Men's House, the secret society, or the 
tribal elders give instruction in the industrial arts. 
For example, children of the Brazilian Bororos go to the 
Bahito, or men's house, as soon as they are weaned, and 
after their entry visit their parents only occasionally. 
The Bahito is 

" a public school where the children are taught spinning, 
weaving, and the manufacture of weapons, and above all 
singing, upon perfection in which is centred the ambition 
of those who wish to become chieftains."*** 

Instruction for social life, including manners, traditions, 
religious observances, come to the savage youth both 
by his own unconscious absorption and by his imitative 
play ; through domestic inculcation ; but mainly through 
disciplinary tests, initiations, or participation in commu- 
nal festivals and communal activities. In fact children 
in certain tribes receive practically no formal instruc- 
tion prior to initiation, which is a public enterprise. ^ ^ 
Among the American Indians in general, Mason asserts, 
the instruction of the child was "the charge, not of the 
parents and grandparents alone but of the whole tribe. " ^ ^ 
Amongst the Greenlanders, a father concerns, himself 
with the single idea, that his sons shall at the very 
earliest learn the use of canoes and weapons; what- 
ever pertains to their training for useful societal life, 
he leaves to the social agencies which surround him^^; 

8" Fric and Radln, xxxvi. J. A. I., 388. 

^^ Notably the Australian tribes. See, e.g., Curr, i., 71-2. 

^^ Handbook of American Indians {Bur. Ethn. Bulletin 30), 414-5. 

83 Ploss, ii., 340. 



Organization of Primitive Education 219 

family education here plays second fiddle. In the 
matter of discipline the share of the tribe is sometimes 
very explicit. Of the Apaches it is said that 

" parents would be ill-advised to punish their boys or 
reprimand them severely. Nothing serious takes place 
without the consent of the entire tribe, which has by no 
means abdicated its collective paternal rights, or delegated 
them to the heads of families in their individual capacity."^'* 

A curious example of the stronger part of the whole 
group fimctioning as a disciplinary agency occurs in 
South Guinea, where the adult males have a secret 
association, Nda, whose object is to keep the women, 
children, and slaves in order. ^^ Other tribes, notably 
in southern India, have a monitorial system in con- 
nection with their men's houses. A head boy is placed 
in charge of the others and is responsible for their 
discipline. ^ ^ 

Various Special Agencies. — In the communication of 
traditional lore, parents, elders (both men and women), 
chiefs, medicine men, bards, public orators and story- 
tellers, and leaders of the secret societies share in vary- 
ing degrees. Among the Zunis, for instance, the priests 
and the mystic order of Kok-ko divide with parents 
the youth's instruction. A ceremony corresponding 
somewhat to Christian baptism and first communion, 
and lasting several days, initiates the child into the 

84Reclus, 131. 

*s Crawley, 43. Similar society among Pome Indians of California: 
see Powers, /. c, 157. 

8* This system prevails among most of the tribes of southeastern 
India except the Chukmas proper. See Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. 
India, 118-9, 182. 



220 Primitive Family and Education 

order of Kok-ko. It is of the utmost importance, for 
''no male child above the age of four years may, after 
death, enter the Kiva of Kok-ko unless he has received 
the sacred breath of Kok-ko" ; and this can only be se- 
cured by initiation. ^7 'phe priests figure also in such 
customs as the shiang pruhpo of southeastern India ; this 
is a religious ceremony in which boys from eight to nine 
years of age, and sometimes men young and old, are 
placed every year in "retreat" in the men's house under 
charge of the priests. ^^ Among the Lolos of western 
China the priest is also the teacher. ^^ In ancient 
Gaul the priests had a large share in education, which 
attracted considerable attention on accoimt of its high 
quality. 9° The Sifans of northeastern Asia do not 
bother with any priestly intermediary, however, but 
hang their children in skin cradles suspended from trees 
in some neighboring forest, and leave them there until 
they are three or foiu* years old, so that they may be 
properly instructed by the deities direct. ^^ 

Men's Houses. — The role of the men's houses has 
been already frequently reiterated, but their education- 
al import can scarce be exaggerated, for their influence 
is both wide and deep. In every inhabited island of 
Torres Straits, Haddon found 

** a certain area set apart for the use of the men which was 
known as a Kwod. . . . Gray-headed men talked and 

«7 Mrs. T. E. Stevenson, Bur. Etkn., v., 548. 

'8 Lewin, /. c, 102 ff.; cf. Chevrier, in L' Anthropologies xvii., 372-3. 

•'Henry, xxxiii. J. A. J., 104. 

9" M. Gustave Fougeres in a lecture before the Alliance Frangaise, 
Yale, Nov. 2, 19 10. Tacitus in his Germania says that in ancient Ger- 
many priests alone were allowed to inflict discipline on warriors. 

" W. J. Reid, Cosmopolitan, xxviii., 443. 



Organization of Primitive Education 221 

discussed about fighting, dancing, tai, angud, women, 
and other matters of interest. The young men sat still 
and learnt from the old men, as my informant said, 'it 
was like a school.* "'* 

The estufa of our own arid Southwest was a still more 
striking educational center. 

''Each clan,*' says Bandelier, "had its own estufa, 
and the young men slept in it under the surveillance of 
one or more of the aged principals, until they married, 
and frequently even afterward. There the young men 
became acquainted with the affairs of their individual 
connections, and little by little also with the business 
of the tribe. There during the long evenings of winter, 
old men taught them the songs and prayers embodying 
traditions and myths, first of their own clan, then of the 
tribe. The estufa was school, club-house, nay, armory 
to a certain extent. It was more. Many of the prominent 
religious exercises took place in it. The estufa on special 
occasions became transformed into a temple for the clan 
who had reared it."^^ 

"Haddon, Rep. of Cambridge Anthrop. Exped. to Torres Str., iii., 
263-4, 365-6; cf. Frobenius, Die Masken u. Geheimbiinde Afrikas, ii8. 

95 Bandelier, The Delight Makers, 19; Fynn,/. c, 133-4. H. Schurtz 
{Alter sklassen und Mdnnerverhdnde: eine Darstellung der Grundformen 
der Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1902), shows how savage life was and is stiU 
honeycombed with secret societies and "clubs" of warriors, hunters, 
etc., which have as ancient an origin as the "marriage classes" of 
clan organization or totemism. These clubs or societies anticipate 
many characteristic elements in the future guild, and are marked 
by secrecy, independence from the family and sometimes the clan, 
common worship of special gods, common meals, jurisdiction within 
the society, and brotherhood. Schurtz shows further how these 
societies transmitted the tribal arts to initiates; the " mysteries " thus 
inculcated include secret ways of warding off witchcraft of enemies, 



222 Primitive Family and Education 

Public Assembly. — Neither should the share of the 
public assembly in education be overlooked. Lawson, 
for instance, wrote of certain Tuscarora gatherings : 

"At these festivals it is, that they give a traditional 
relation of what hath passed among them, to the younger 
fry, these verbal deliveries being always published in their 
most public assemblies, serve instead of our traditional 
notes by the use of letters."^^ 

"Fosterage." — One other form of the primitive 
division of educational labor deserves at least mention, 
namely, the custom of "fosterage." Among the ancient 
Scandinavians *'it was the general custom among chiefs 

the art of warfare, making of boats, nets for fishing, traps for animals, 
snares for birds, secrets of hunting, and the magical ceremonies and 
mask- dances which give success to the hunter, methods of building 
the communal house and of forging metals so as to conciliate hostile 
spirits and avoid trouble. 

9^H. of N. C, 70. The public nature of instruction in tribal mores 
and traditions ought by this time to be sufficiently evident. Feather- 
man's account (/. c, i., 514) of Hottentot mothers teaching children 
"all the customs, ceremonials, and practices which had existed among 
them from times immemorial " is, to say the least, open to question. The 
West Australian circumcision ceremonies are far more nearly typical. 
Here the whole tribe assembles for the occasion; certain food taboos 
are invoked; the entire company join in certain feasts and dances; 
the candidates are painted, etc.; "at night, huge fires are kindled, and 
the elders sit around them with the candidates, teaching them the laws 
and traditions of the tribes, the boundaries of their territory, the reasons 
of their feuds with other tribes, etc., etc., and the strict lines of their 
future conduct are clearly laid down for them. Ritual songs and 
dances are taught and performed, their significance explained and the 
mystery of the 'tarlow' [magic rites for increasing food-supply] and 
its ceremonial expounded. " Such ceremonies review the whole content 
of tribal knowledge, and are specially significant from the fact that the 
group functions as a whole in the business of instruction. See Clement, 
Intern. Archivf. Ethnogr., xvi., lo-ii. 



Organization of Primitive Education 223 

and other leading men not to have their children reared 
at home, but to have them educated with some dis- 
tinguished friend for the future duties of life.'^^s j 
have been told that the custom of exchanging children 
is an educational practice between certain South Sea 
islands. 

"The subject of Fosterage formed an important part in the 
family life of the early Irish people. It was held by them 
that discipline, obedience, and respect for their superiors 
and the work which boys and girls would have to follow 
in their after lives, was best learnt away from their own 
homes. Parents consequently sent their children, when 
about seven years of age, to a relative or some one belonging 
to their own grade of society, to be nurtured and instructed 
so as to fit them for their future calling in life. The person 
to whom the child was intrusted was called his foster- 
father. As the young person's work in life was, in addition 
to physical exercise and the use of arms, connected with 
the soil, the cultivation of the land and that which grew 
and fed upon it was what the boy had to learn. The 
girls in the same way were instructed 'in discipline, the 
use of the quern, kneading, and all descriptions of domestic 
work.' We hear nothing of the intellectual acquirements 
of these young people; in truth no instruction of the kind 
was possible until well after St. Patrick's time. Up to 
that period the education of the hereditary characters of 
the young persons was the aim of foster-parents, together 
with training their powers of endurance and preparation 
for war. To enable the foster-parent to fulfil his trust 
he was, under the Brehon Code, allowed to chastise his 
foster-son, but never to the extent of drawing blood or 
leaving a mark on the lad; heavy penalties were imposed 

95 Du Chaillu, Viking Age, ii., 42. 



224 Primitive Family and Education 

for a breach of this law. In case of illness, inability to 
learn his duties, or for gross misconduct, the foster-father 
was allowed to send the lad back to his parents; on the 
other hand, if a foster-father kept a boy until he was 
seventeen years of age, when the lad was under obligation 
to return to his home, and it was then found that he was 
not efficient in the use of arms and for the work of his 
future calling, obedient, and in fact, properly instructed, 
the foster-father was heavily fined. The amount of the 
fine was to be made over to the lad because, as the Brehon 
Code states, it was "upon him the injury of the want of 
learning had been inflicted. "^^ 

I have quoted this passage somewhat at length to show 
that at least one rude people concerned itself seriously 
and intelligently with education; and furthermore, 
that this same people denied in their law and in their 
practice that dictum of Sir Francis Galton to the effect 
that the child's own parents are his best teachers. 
But the ancient Irish were not alone in this opinion. 
We are sometimes told that the family is the basic 
institution in Chinese education. Yet, as a matter of 
fact, in the technique of education the family has little 
share. Mr. W. A. P. Martin, in his sketch of Chinese 
education prepared for the United States Bureau of 
Education, declares that 

*' mothers and nurses are not taught to read; nor are 
fathers less inclined than with us to leave the work of 

9^ Macnamara, Evolution and Function of Living Purposive Matter, 
199-200. It may be objected that the Brehon Code, much of which was 
written as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century, has no ethnic value 
in our discussion. Yet, as Professor Cherry remarks, it "is extremely 
ancient; and the most archaic principles prevailed in it centuries after 
they had disappeared elsewhere" {Evolution of Criminal Law, 18). 



Organization of Primitive Education 225 

instruction to be begun by the professional teacher. This 
they are the more disposed to do, as an ancient maxim, 
sanctioned by Chinese authority, prohibits a parent being 
the instructor of his own children^'* 

In another place Mr. Martin adds: "In general, 
however, a Chinese home is not a hot-bed for the 
development of mind." Indeed he considers the 
Chinese family an institution of positive educational 
retardation. 97 

9T U. S. Dept. of Educ. Circular of Information No, i (Washington, 
1877), pp. 12-13, italics not in the original. Cf. Smith, Chinese Character- 
istics, 173: "That Chinese children have no proper discipline, that they 
are not taught to obey their parents, and that as a rule they have no idea 
of prompt obedience as we understand it, is a most indubitable fact 
attested by wide experience. " In defense of this easy-going policy of 
non-interference, the Chinese say that "the crooked tree, when it is 
large, will straighten itself. " 

IS 



CHAPTER VIII 

GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

WE are perhaps now in a position to determine the 
net results of the "appeal to the past" made by 
the protagonists of familial instruction as the type and 
basis of all education, (i) In the first place it is plain 
that much of primitive education is self-education. 
The various agencies of instruction only aid the process 
of self -learning. For with Professor Dewey we believe 
that "in the educational transaction, the initiative lies 
with the learner even more than in commerce it lies 
with the buyer. " But it is equally clear that primitive 
men did not relegate the learner wholly to the school 
of experience; and that very early in the world's history 
they began to short-cut experience and formulate it into 
more or less definite subjects, methods, and agencies 
of instruction. (2) In Chapter I we saw that primitive 
conditions surrounding the struggle for existence, and 
savage mental outfit, were scarcely favorable to an 
exalted ideal of family life; nor did they permit of 
orderly family instruction. The obscure sense of per- 
sonality, fleeting memory, dullness of sensibilities, 
and other traits were not calculated to admit of much 
in the way of conscious, reflective education, familial or 

226 



General Summary and Conclusion 227 

otherwise. (3) In Chapters II and III it developed that 
the marital bond originated and endured, not primarily 
for the benefit of the offspring, but rather for the ad- 
vantage of the parents. Women and children were usu- 
ally sought after as aids in the struggle for life, not for 
themselves, or for the mere pleasure of their company. 
The economic equaled, and perhaps even subordinated, 
the genesic or procreative motives. Indeed, it is prob- 
ably true that the primary interests of husband and 
wife, of parent and child, were, and still remain, antago- 
nistic, and could only be brought into harmony by 
pressure of other interests and forces. The content of 
both marital and parental relations has always been 
largely a social matter; biology furnishes the minimum 
measure, but society must fill it up and give it flavor. 
Furthermore, monogamic pairing, which is usually 
assumed by the supporters of familial education, is by 
no means proved. The evidence points to the reverse, 
and establishes at least that primitive marriage was 
either so unstable, or organized on such a basis as to 
preclude that free play of parental influence so essential 
to home education. (4) If monogamous pairing is not an 
innate instinct, nor even a thoroughly acquired charac- 
teristic, no more are the parental and filial relations 
genmne instincts. In Chapter IV we saw the hazy no- 
tions of kinship and relationship entertained by primi- 
tive peoples. We saw that a full triangular relationship 
between parents themselves, between each of them and 
the child, and between the child and both his parents, 
is a comparatively late development. We noted the 
strong sense of clan or tribal kinship predominating over 
what we consider the natural relationships. Certain 



228 Primitive Family and Education 

devices and fictions (e. g.y couvade) had to be invoked 
to establish the latter. Abundant evidence was pro- 
duced in Chapter V to prove that primitive parental 
regard and affection were rather biologic, emotional, 
self -gratifying, than rational or conducive to the child's 
own welfare. Still further, it was shown that in many- 
cases parental love and care were utterly lacking. And, 
what is still more to the point, that primitive parenthood, 
loving or otherwise, brought with it, per se, no capacity 
for maintaining the child's life or giving him adequate 
and fitting nurture. Again, the child was in general 
regarded as a plaything, or a merchantable thing, or a 
thing out of which service might be extracted. And on 
the side of the child, it appeared that filial attachment 
and respect were not innate instincts, but only devel- 
oped with the general advance of intelligence and feeling. 
On the whole, we concluded from this portion of our 
study that the function of the primitive family was 
rather biologic and economic than educational. Fur- 
thermore, in Chapters VI and VII by a study, through 
comparison and elimination, of forces and agencies 
actually at work in primitive education, we found that 
the aim, the content, the methods, and the organization 
of primitive instruction were predominantly public and 
communal in their nature; and that the family occupied 
only a subordinate position in education. Even the 
province where domestic education appeared at its best, 
viz., vocational instruction, is often invaded by group 
agencies. And the various puberty ceremonies, initia- 
tions, and paraphernalia of moral instruction, which we 
found to be supremely important, are pre-eminently 
group activities. In practically every case, save where 



General Summary and Conclusion 229 

the group coincided with the family, we found the 
group as the constant background and arbiter of the 
individual's training; and this held good, whether ed- 
ucation was mere unconscious imitation and absorption, 
or whether it had been crystallized and consciously ad- 
ministered by appropriate agencies. Finally, it cannot 
be blinked that very frequently traits and habits fos- 
tered, or at least permitted, by family training, were 
distinctly inimical to both social and individual wel- 
fare, and that other group agencies were burdened with 
the task of overlaying or extirpating them. We in no 
wise pretend to have drawn all the educational or so- 
ciological conclusions from the evidence presented. 
Suffice it to have shown that those who would make the 
family the type and foimdation of all education, ''be- 
cause it is the imit and basis of society, " or ''because it 
is divine and therefore a priori superior to any other 
educational institution, " or because "it has always been 
so, " are really spending their time and energy, like the 
great fish Jasaconius of Irish monastery legend, in 
chasing their tails. 

It seems perfectly evident that the structure and 
fimction of the family have changed and may continue 
to change. With regard to its future as a social in- 
stitution we shall not hazard a dogmatic assumption. 
But until "spiritual conception" becomes the rule 
instead of the legendary exception, until that millennium 
breaks upon a regenerated world where universal 
brotherhood is a reality and not a metaphor, until then 
the family, perhaps more or less modified from its 
present form, will remain one of our greatest, even 
though not model, educational assets. And we will 



230 Primitive Family and Education 

save ourselves from much fruitless endeavor to evoke 
from social institutions educational services which they 
cannot yield, we will spare ourselves much criticism of 
these institutions because of their inability to rise to our 
demands, we will promote the efficiency of other in- 
stitutions, by frankly admitting the educational limi- 
tations of family life. It is altogether likely that social 
evolution is bringing about a somewhat new division 
of labor among social institutions, and that to the 
family will be allotted a more transcendent and valu- 
able role than it has heretofore played. How largely 
educational that r61e will be is a matter rather of 
speculation than prediction. 



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l886e 



240 Primitive Family and Education 

Spencer, W. B., and Gillen, F. J., The Native Tribes of Central Aus- 
tralia, London, 1899. 
Northern Tribes of Central Aus- 
tralia, London, 1904. 
Spiegel, F. von, Erdnische Alterthumskunde, 3 vols., Leipzig, 

1871-8. 
Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, 1817-1820, Munchen, 1831. 
Sproat, G. M., Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, London, 1868. 
Stammler, C, Ueher die Stellung der Frauen im alten deutschen Recht., 

Berlin, 1877. 
Starcke, O. N., The Primitive Family, New York, 1889. 
Stein, Ludwig, Die Sociale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie, Stuttgart, 

1897. 
Steinen, Karl von den, Shingu Tribes (Berlin Museum, 1888). 
Steinmetz, S. R., Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwickelung der 
Strafe, 2 vols., Leyden, 1894. 
"Das Verbal tniss zwischen Eltem u. Kindem bei 
den Naturvolkem " (in Ztscft. f. Socialwissen- 
schaft, vol. i., 1898). 
Stevenson, R. L., In the South Seas (Scribner ed., New York, 

1896). 
Stevenson, Mrs. T. E., " Religious Life of the Zuiii Child," in Bur. 

Ethnol.f V. 
Storck, Karl, Der Tanz, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1903. 
Strabo, Geography, transl. for Bohn's Class. Libr., 3 vols., London, 1889- 

1892. 
Sutherland, A., Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, 2 vols., London, 
1898. 

Theal, Geo. M., Kaffir Folk-Lore, London, 1882. 

Thomas, C. (in conference with W J McGee), " The Indians of North 

America in Historic Times" (vol. ii. of Lee and Thorpe's Hist, of N. 

Am.), Philadelphia, 1903. 
Thomas, N. W., Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage in Australia, 

Cambridge, 1906. 
Thomas, W. L, Source Book for Social Origins, Chicago, 1909. 

Sex and Society, Chicago, 1907. 
Thouar, E. a,. Explorations dans VAmerique du Sud, Paris, 

1891. 
Thurston, E., Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, Madras, 

1906. 



Selected Bibliography 241 

Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 4th ed., 2 vols., London, 1903. 
Early History of Mankind, 2d ed., London, 1870. 
"On a Method of Investigating the Development of 

Institutions," etc., in xviii. J. A. I. 
Anthropology, new edition, New York, 1909. 

Vassal, Gabrielle, M.,On and Off Duty in Annam, London, 19 10. 

Waitz, T., Introduction to Anthropology, transl. CoUingwood, London, 

1863. 
Wake, C. S., The Development of Marriage and Kinship, London, 1889. 
Wallace, Alfred R., The Malay Archipelago, New York, 1869. 
Wallaschek, R., Primitive Music, London, 1893. 
Webster, Hutton, Primitive Secret Societies, New York, 1908. 
Werner, A., British Central Africa, London, 1906. 
Westermarck, E., a History of Human Marriage, 2d ed. New York, 

1894. 
Whetham, W. C. D., and Catherine D., The Family and The Nation^ 

London, 1909. 
Whitney, W. D., Language and the Study of Language, New York, 1867. 
Williams, T., and Calvert, J., Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1859. 
Worms, Rene, Organisme et Societe, Paris, 1895. 
Wuttke, a., Geschichte des Heidenthums, etc., 2 vols., Breslau, 1852-3. 

Yeats, W. B., The Celtic Twilight, London, 1902. 

Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic, 41 vols., Berlin, 1869^. 

Zeitschrift fiir Socialwissenschaft, Berlin, 1898^. 

Zeitschrift far vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, Stuttgart, iSySff. 

Zeitschrift fUr Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, i86ojf. 

Zenker, V., Die Gesellschaft, vol. ii., Berlin, 1903. 

Ziegler, Th., Geschichte der Pddagogie, Munchen, 1895. 



SUBJECT INDEX 



Abortion, 124 

Adoption, 118, 128 

Adultery, 37, 47-8 

Aged, treatment of, in savagery, 

Aggressiveness fostered in chil- 
dren, 159-60 

Aims of savage education, 143-6, 
188 

Ancestor worship, 5, 172 

Animal traits in primitive parent- 
hood, 95-6, 1 13-4 

Apathetic monogamy, 44 



B 



Babies, primitive notions on ori- 
gins of, 64. ff. 
Bachelors' houses, 87 
Brehon Code, 224 



Caimibalism, funeral, 74 

of children, 85, 124-6 
Chastity lacking, 40, 46 
Child-labor laws, 10 1 
Children, cruelty to, 114-5 

deformed, treatment of, 126 

despots, 157-8 

early maturity of, 108-9, 

154. 199 
eaten, 85 
exchanged, 223 
given away, 114 
mortality of, 119, 121/. 
neglected, 113, 143, 150-1 
not valued for themselves, 104 
pawned, 116 



property, 100 Jf., 118, 228 

sacrificed, 115 

sold, 96, 104, 1 12-3, 116--7 

spoiled, 96, 99, 132-3, 154 Jf. 
Chinese family retards education, 

225 
Circumcision no evidence of sex 
understanding, 75 

and education, 196, 222 
Clan tie stronger than family, 

58-9 
Classification of primitive peoples 

on basis of education, 148-9 
Codex Mendoza, 182, 191 
Collective marriage, 29 
"Contact" theory of society, 15-7 
Content of savage education, 

146-80 
Corporal punishment, not the 
rule in savagery, 153/. 
examples of, 19 1-2 
Couvade, 75-8, 139, 228 
Creation myths, primitive ideas 

of procreation in, 65^. 
Crying, function of, 107-8 
Curriculum or course of studies, 

primitive, 146-8, 165, 166, 176, 

178 
Curse as discipline, 189 



D 



Dancing, 147, 178, 180, 205, 213 Jf. 
Directed imitation, 182 ff., 209, 

216 
Discipline, 152, 176, 190-2 

lack of, 152, 153, 154 Jf-. 225 
Disobedience encouraged, 132-3 
Divorce, 39 
Domestic education, 164-6, 171, 

183, 228 



243 



244 



Index 



Domestic happiness lacking, 44-5 
Drill, 147, 184 #., 216 
Dullness of savage sensibilities, 10, 
134-6, 226 



E 



Endurance tests, 115/193, 197 
Exchanging wives, 38 
Exhortation in savage education, 
185-6,216 



F 



Family, arises from child-bearing 
^ and food-quest, 18 
biologic and economic func- 
tion of, 140 
changes, 12, 229-30 
defined, 20 

economic arrangement, 18-9 
educational function, 53-4 
feeling weak, 41, iii 
foundation of the state, 2 
fundamental school, 2, 3, 4 
fundamental social institu- 
tion, 3 
hinders social discipline, 161- 

3. 229 
lack of terms for in primitive 

language, 81 
not a natural institution, 19 
origin of, 18-9 
prehistoric, 104 Jf. 
prior to marriage, 21 
role in evolution, 13 
sequence of forms, 52 
share in vocational training, 

163-6 
size of savage, 108 
"social cell," 13-4 
subordinate to group, 57, 90 
ties temporary, 108-10 
Father-family, 83 
right, 200 
share in reproduction ignored, 

70 
the parent, 84 ff. 
Fear as educational method, 187 Jf. , 

216 
FertiHty a blessing, 100 
Filial sentiment, lack of, 129 ff., 
228 



Fire and kinship, 57 

Food and kinship, 57 

Forethought, savage lack of, 137-8 

"Fosterage," 222-4 

Free love, 42 

Funeral cannibalism, 73 



Ghosts and ghost-fear in educa- 
tion, 187-8 
Girls, education of, 164-6, 185 
Group communism, 36 

interest in education, 175 Jf., 

217/. 
marriage, 28 j^., 79 
parenthood, 80 



H 



Habit-forming an aim of savage 

education, 143-4 
"Hardening" process, 120, 168 
Head-Hunters, 168-71, 177-8 
Hetairism, 24, 27 
Husquenaugh, 201-3, 206 



Ignorance of child hygiene, 118- 

21,139 
Imitation, 181 #., 209 
Incest, 28 
Individual, social unit, 14 

subordinated to group, 31-2 
Infant mortality, 11 9-21 
Infanticide, 18, 126-9, 207 
Initiation, 30, 88, 89, 147, 175, 176, 

192, 196, 198, 199 #., 216, 218, 

228 
Intercourse ignored as cause of 

reproduction, 72 
Interests of parent and child 

antagonistic, 18 



Jus prima noctis, 29 

K 

Kindergarten encroaches on 
family, 2 



Index 



245 



Kinship and relationship dis- 
tinguished, 55 
acquired by ceremonials, 89 



Love, plays no part in savage 

matrimony, 19 
no such word in Papuan 

tongue, 113 
of cfifspring slight, 1 12 



M 



Magic as discipline, 160-1 
Magical plays, 213 
Magicians, school for, 178 
"Margin of refusal," 144 
Marriage, absence of moral ele- 
ment in, 45 

Anglo-Saxon, 22 

brittle, 35, 38, 40 

business arrangement, 22, 44, 
227 

distinguished from family, 2i 

lax, 35 

preparation for, 195, 197 

unstable, 138, 227 
Maternal descent, 65 
Medicine-man, 172 

woman, 174-5 
Memoriter methods, 181 
Memory, feeble primitive, 10,91-3, 

226 
Men's house, 61, 86, 181, 218, 

220-1 
Metempsychosis, 70 
Methods of savage education, 181- 

217 
Mexico, loose sex relations in, 42 
Mimetic plays, 184 
Monogamy, divine, 34 

not innate, 34 

ofVeddahs, 27 

primitive, 44 
Moral education, 171 Jf. 
Mores, 11, 18, 20, 42, 43, 46, 171, 

189, 199, 222 
Mortuary customs, an index of 
parental regard, 98 

economic effects of, 147 
Mother-right, 200 



insulted by children, 158, 163 
the parent, 58-9, 71 ff. 
Multiple parenthood, 80 



N 



Nature-study, primitive, 178-9, 

185 
Nunu, Melanesian theory of, 70-1 



Obtuseness, savage, 134-6 
Oratory as education, 186 
Ordeals, 147, 193, 199 
Organization of savage education, 
217-25 



Pairing instinct, 19 
Parental affection, 93^. 

not universal, no, 117, 

228 
among animals, 93-4 
discipline lacking, 154^., 225 
indifference and cruelty, i lojf. 
instinct, 94, 129, 139 
relation, a fruit of culture, 14 
sequence of, 64 
unstable, 139 
sentiment, 93 
Passion or temper common motive 

for discipline, 155-61 
Paternal relationship ignored, 74 
Paternity, rise of, 83 ff. 
P atria potestas, 102, 116 
Patriarchate, no, 139 
Phallicism, 75 
Physical training, 166-71 
Pirrauru, 31 

Play, 142, 164, 208 Jf., 216 
Polyandry, 40, 48 
Polygamy, 19,48/. 
Polygyny, 49 

Practical nature of savage educa- 
tion, 145-6 
Priesthood, educational r6]e of, 

172, 175, 199, 219, 220 
Primitive ideas on procreation, 

65#. 
men not pure egoists, 15, 107 
mind, 8-9 



246 



Index 



Primitive, sense of "self" or per- 
sonality, 10,226 
Procreation, hazy ideas of savages 

on, 67 ff. 
Promiscuity, human, 24 ff.^ 34, 
37, 40, 46, 64 
denied, 27 Jf. 
intermittent, 35 
sub-human, 23-4 
Propinquity, 36 
Prostitution, 19, 34, 36 
Puberty rites, 88, 175, 192 Jf., 228 
Public assembly and education, 

222 
Punishment, primitive ideas on, 

155-7 
Punaluan marriage, 28 



Reformation, Kafir methods of, 

160-1 
Reincarnation, Melanesian ideas 

of, 70 
Relationship, primitive notions 
of, 55 #..73. 86, 139,227 
terms of, 78 ff. 
Religion, 145, 147, 180, 211, 213, 

214,217,221 
Restraint, lack of in savage 

children, 153 
Russian brutal discipline, 191 



Sale of children, 96, 112-3 
Savage parents, affectionate, 96-7 

self-indulgent, 96 
Secret language, 204, 205 

societies, 87, 89, 175, 176, 
199,218-9 
Selection, human, depends on 

education, 141 
Self-assertiveness encouraged, 153 
education, 182, 216 
savage ideas of, 10 
Sense of sin lacking in savages, 

137-8 
Separation of children from 
parents, S^ff. 



Sex jealousy, 27, 31, 36, 37 
license, 30, 31, 205-6 

solidarity, 61, 86 
taboos, 61 jf., 86, 139 

Slavery, children sold into, 117 

Social heredity, 19, 178 
selection, 204 

" Soft pedagogy, " 149-53 

Sparing the rod, 153-4 

Spontaneous imitation, 210 

Sterility a curse, 100 

Story- telling, 179, 185-7 

Suckling period, 108 

Superstition in education, 187 ff., 
216 

"Survivals" in ethnology, 7 

Sympathetic magic, 76, 78 



Taboos, 61, 139, 146, 195, 198 
Terms of relationship, 78 jf. 
Totemism, 57, 59, 64, 70, 90, 179, 

221 
Tradition, 146, 147, 171, 176 ff., 

181, 187, 199, 204 
Trial marriage, 37 #. 
Tribal elders, educational r61e of, 
172, 175, 199 
share in discipline, 219 
solidarity, 201 
Twins killed, 126-7 



U 



Unchastity, 26 
Uncle, 60 

Unformulated group discipline, 
159 



Variation, causes of in savage 

society, 144-5 
Vocational education, 145-6, 163- 

6, 218, 228 

W 

Wife, as property, 45, 47-8, 85 
merely tolerates husband, 
58-9 



AUTHOR INDEX 



Abel, 113, 153, 158 

^schylus, 84 
Allison, 97 
Ambrosetti, 156 
Ankermann, 88 
Appleton, 209 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 86 
Aristotle, 20 
Arnold, 162 

B 

Bachofen, 24, 29, 77, 83 
Baegert, 37, 81, 99, 113, 122, 

209 
Bagge, 47, 197 
Bagley, 4 

Bancroft, 41, 117, 132, 133 
Bandelier, 58, 59, 86, 221 
Barbeau, 59 
Barth, 14 
Bastian, 75 
Beauvallet, 116 
Beetz, 2-3 
Bell, 47 

Bennett, 47, 62, 126 
Bent, 75 
Bentley, 90 
Bessel, 114 
Bishop, 97 
Boas, 39, 97, 124 
Bonney, 97 
Bosanquet, 18 
Brehm, 23 
Brentano, 22 
Brinton, 66, 67 
Browne, 129 
Brunache, 97 



149, 



Biicher, 14, 88, 109, 118 
Buckley, 68, 75 
Burrows, 39, 47, 50, iii 
Burton, 45, 112 



Campbell, 86 

Catlin, 203, 211 

Chalmers, 30, 206 

Chamberlain, 109, 179, 180, 182 

Cherry, 224 

Chevrief, 47, 90, 199, 220 

Claiborne, 70 

Clement, 222 

Clifford, 79 

Codrington, 39, 70, 77, 82, 88, 97, 

210 
Cole, 196 
Compayr6, 107 
Comte, 14 

Cook, Captain, 39, 62, 92, 97 
Cook, Miss, 48 
Cosentini, 14 
Coulanges, 20, 100 
Crantz, 25, 26, 50, 94, 97, 100, 

114, 120, 154 
Crawford, 19 
Crawfurd, 97 
Crawley, 16, 17, 27, 30, 56, 57, 62, 

63, 64, 77, 78, 108, 197, 199, 219 
Crooke, 47 
Curr, 45, 88, 155, 190, 198, 200, 

204,218 
Cushing, 59, 73, 75, 127, 156, 210 



Dal ton, 88 
Damont, 87 



247 



248 



Index 



Darwin, 14, 25, 26, 27, 141, 182 

Davidson, 4, 180 

Dawson, 108 

Day, 119 

Decorse, 14 

Delafosse, 97 

Deniker, 27, 214, 216 

Dewey, 91, 226 

Dibble, 115 

D'Orbigny, 26, 63 

Dorsey, 129, 180, 194, 217 

Dowd, 109, II It 191 

Dresslar, 188 

Du Chaillu, 23, 126, 223 

Duncan, 116 

Durkheim, 9, 79 



Eastman, 97, 107, 175, 180, 182, 

185, 194, 211, 212 
Eels, 183 

Eleutheropulos, 14 
Ellis, 47, 56, 61, 75, 129, 132, 138, 

158, 180, 183 
Ell wood, 27 
Elton, 153 
Espinas, 13 
Ewald, 116 
Eyre, 129 



Pages, 183 

Featherman, 97, 112, 118, 127, 

132, 167, 175, 180, 222 
Fewkes, 203 
Finsch, 88, 97, 153, 158 
Fiske, 13 

Fison and Howitt, 29, 31, 88, 190 
Flandrau, 42 
Flower, 97 
Forbes, 97, no 
Fougeres, 220 
Frazer, 32, 59, 66, 70, 71, 72, 77, 

90, 197, 200 
Freire-Marreco, 214 
Fric and Radin, 218 
Fries, 98 
Fritschj 57, 197 
Frobenius, 180, 221 
Fumess, 47, 68, 87, 88, 119, 169, 

178 



Fynn, 58, 133, 160, 180, 221 

G 

Gardiner, 97, 191 

Gason, 155 

Gastambide, 102 

Gibbs, 41, 47, 59. 113. 132, 151. i95 

Giddings, 14 

Gide, 24 

Girard, 48 

Giraud-Teulon, 56, 77 

Gomme, 12, 14, 40, 57, 59, 81, loi 

Gotzen, Graf von, 117 

Grabowsky, 97 

Graham, 59 

Granville and Roth, 47, 152 

Grasberger, 211 

Graves, 182 

Grey, 187, 197 

Grinnell, 98, 172, 175, 186 

Groos, 14, 107, 182, 215, 217 

Guimps, Baron de, 4 

Guise, 66, 197 

Gulick, 217 

Gurbutt, 76, 116 

Gurdin, 59 



H 



Haarhof, 197 

Haddon, 97, 175, 205, 220, 221 

Hagen, 88, 153 

Hailmann, 60, 122 

Hall, 197, 217 

Hardy and Elkington, 180 

Hartland, 59, 75 

Hellwald, 77 

Hennepin, 41, 160, 187 

Henry, 220 

Herbart, 4 

Hodson, 30, 88 

Hofler, 70 

Holland, 186 

Holmes, 201, 208 

Holub, 196 

Hoogers, 132 

Hopkins, 75 

Howard, 18, 23 

Howitt, 28, 74, 85, 129, 199, 200, 

204, 205 
Hubert and Mauss, 178 
Huguenin, 94, 97 



Index 



249 



Hunt, 129 
Hutter, 132 



im Thurn. 76, 77, 78, 97, no, 
151, 180, 184 



Jenks, 39, 62, 87, 97, 108, 121, 122, 

217 
Jerusalem, 79 
Jevons, 14 
Johnston, SirH., 47, 48, 62, 75, 87, 

97, 98, 108, no, 112 
Johnston, R. F., 40, 117, 129 
Jolly, 100 
Joly, 126 
Joske, 88 



K 



Keller, 21 

Kennan, 97 

Ker, 67, 187 

Kidd, 8, 61, 69, 127, 134, 160 

Kingsley, 97, 126, 132, 138, 197, 

204 
Koch, 97, 197 
Kohler, 29, 79 
Krauss, 210 

Krieger, 109, 153, 157, 163, 197 
Kubary, no, 151 
Kulischer, 30, 90 



Laf argue, 197 

Lafitau, 78 

La Hontan, Baron de, 83 

Landor, 26, in 

Lang, A., 27, 31, 36, 70, 74, 77 

Lang, J. D., 155 

Latham, 39 

Laurie, 4 

Lawson, 41, 46, 90, 156, 186, 203, 

217 
Lay land, 115 
Lazarus, 109 
Lecky, 116, 132 
Leprince, 47, 197 



Letourneau, 92, 109, 116, 151, 

152, i53»i8o,2n 
Levy-Bruhl, 9, 79 
Lewin, 47, 132, 171, 197, 217, 219 
Lewis and Clarke, 48, 66, 120, 156, 

159 

Lichtenstein, 109 

Lippert, 14, 20, 21, 22, 56, 57, 60, 
77, 84, 90, loi, 109, no, 116, 
126, 129, 132, 135, 151, 182, 197, 

215 
Loria, 14 
Loskiel, 40, 59, 97, 108, 133, 151, 

156, 175, 180, 197 
Low, 88 
Lubbock, 24, 32, 59, 64, 77, 127, 

129 
Lumholtz, 97, III 
Lummis, 58, 98, 132, 179, 187 



M 



MacCauley, 151 

Macdonald, 108, 193, 204 

Mackenzie, 54 

Macnamara, 224 

McGee, 44, 59, 74, 97, 159, 197, 

213 
McKenzie, 70 
McLennan, 24, 57 
Maine, 8, 13 

Man, 38, 47, 98, 129, 157, 164, 197 
Marchand, 120 
Markham, 194 
Marriott, 115 
Martin, 224, 225 
Martius, von, 112, 117, 132, 151, 

156, 197, 198 
Mason, 94, 166, 180, 182, 185, 218 
Massey, 78 

Matthews, 66, 98, 200, 205 
Maurer, 75 
Menard, 85, 132 
Merolla, 120 
Merriam, 66 
Michelet, 14 
Milloni, de, 75 
Milne, 70 
Moggridge, 196 
Monroe, 3, 182 
Moody, 72 

Mooney, 97, 126, 127, 175, 217 
Morelet, 185 



250 



Index 



Morgan, 12, 18, 24, 28, 59, 78, 79, 

98,217 
Mucke, loi 
Murdoch, 39, 97, 180 

N 

Nadaillac, 75 

Nansen, 97, 107 

Nassau, 127 

Nelson, 41, 100, 121, 129, 151, 

180, 186 
Niblock, 98 
Nicholas, 62 
Noguchi, 217 
Northcote, 88 



Okuma, 172 



Palmer, 98 

Park, 51 

Parkinson, 127, 137, 197, 198 

Parsons, 22, 50, 94, 109, 129, 148, 
180, 182 

Pater, 70 

Paulitschke, 102 

Payne, 78, 79 

Pearson, 79 

Peary, 37 

Pector, 47, 198, 205 

Perez, 92 

Peschel, 27, 77 

Pestalozzi, 4 

Pfeil, 152, 158 

Pfoundes, 119 

Phillips, 16 

Piludski, 127 

Pinkerton, 121, 210 

Ploss, 70, 77, 94, 95, 108, 109, 114, 
115, 118, 121, 122, 127, 129, 132, 
151, 152, 153, 154. 155, 158, 180, 
182, 187, 191, 192, 194, 210, 217, 
218 

Pommerol, 97 

Pope Leo XIII., 14 

Posada, 18 

Post, 29, 56, 59, 102, 129 

Powell, 57, 186 

Powers, 26, 47, 133, 156, 198, 219 



Pratt, loi, 108, 109, 180 

Preuss, 75 

Proyart, 108, 154 

Purvis, 30, 47, St, 119, 189, 217 

R 

Rampal, 116 

Rasmussen, 38, 66, 68, 98, 115, 

132 
Ratzel, 41, 42, 45, 62, 97, 98, no, 

120, 126, 151, 163, 180, 217 
Reclus, 40, 94, 97, 109, 121, 219 
Reeder, 22 
Reid, 193, 220 
Renz, 97 

Richter, Jean Paul, 107 
Riedel, 89 
Riggs, 180 
Rivers, 29, 40, 60 
Rivet, 46, 62, 156, 163 
Robinson, 95, 106 
Roscoe, 127 
Ross, 123 
Rossbach, 75 
Roth, 22, 27, 40, 47, 76, 77, 97, 

125, 129, 157, 197, 198 
Rousseau, 118 
Rowney, 40 



St. John, 117, 157 

Sarasin, 132 

Saumade, 116 

Schaffie, 14 

Schmidt, 129, 180 

Schrader, 14, 44, 48, 81, 85, 116, 

126, 129 
Schurtz, 221 
Schweinfurth, 182 
Seligmann, 127, 191 
Semon, 28, 94, 105, 153, 205 
Shakespear, 40 
Sheane, 196 
Short, 180 
Sieroshevsky, 73, 82, 117, 120, 

123. 135 
Simkhowitsch, 191 
Simon, 53, 88 
Skeat, 68, 197 
Skeat and Blagden, 69, 97, 107, 

127,178 



Index 



251 



Smith, Adam, 136 

Smith, A. D., 47, 109 

Smith, A. H., 116, 121, 125, 132 

Smith, E. R., 160 

Smith, W. R., 58, 85 

Smyth,^46, 73, 97, 155 

Solatoroff, 14 

Somerville, 198 

Spencer, B., 72, 175 

Spencer and Gillen, 28, 97, 107, 

125, 127, 129, 146, 180, 182, 

185,205 
Spencer, F. C, 180, 183, 203 
Spencer, H., 14, 44, 132, 146, 148, 

190 
Spiegel, 100 
Spix and Martius, 112, 132, 155, 

195, 198 
Sproat, 156 
Stammler, 129 

Starcke, 18, 27, 44, 57, 94, 100 
Starr, 194 
Stein, 25 

Steinen, von den, 97, 132 
Steinmetz, 14, 56, 92, 100, 109, 

113, 133, 148, 172 
Stevenson, Mrs. M. C, 97, 203, 

213,220 
Stevenson, R. L., 98, 99, 157 
Storck, 217 
Sumner, 18, 21, 25, 2^, 52, 56, 94, 

115, 129, 192 
Sutherland, 13, 46, 94, 108, 109, 

124, 129, 162, 180 
Swanton, 8 
Swedenborg, 84 
Swift, 109, 180 



Talbot, 119 

Tate, 47, 197 

Teit, 151, 197 

Thai, 29 

Theal, 180, 184, 187 

Thomas, C., 45 

Thomas, N. W., 30, 56, 78, 81, 97 

Thomson, 47, 129 

Thouar, 132 



Thunberg, 184 

Thurnwald, 70, 109 

Thurston, ']'j , 127 

Tomel and Rollet, 137 

Torday and Joyce, 46, 60, 182, 

197 
Tout, 67, 167, 195 
Turner, 97, 187 
Twain, 12 1 
Tylor, 48, 68, T], 85, 98, 128, 131, 

132, 172, 210, 214 



Volz, 113 
Von Troil, 108 



W 



Waitz, 79 

Wake, 27, 29, 56, 64, 78, 84, 85, 

94,98, 129, 172 
Wallace, 108, 114, 153 

Wallaschek, 217 

Ward, 9 

Webster, 62, 197, 198, 200 

Weeks, 57 

Werner, 62, 118, 127 

Westermarck, 13, 22, 23, 27, 29, 

100 
Whyte, 2'] 
Williams and Calvert, 25, 48, 52, 

62, 114, 125, 128, 129, 131, 153, 

158, 163, 168, 189, 217 
Williams, Talcott, 7 
Worms, 14 
Wundt, 32 
Wuttke, 45, 102, 129, 132, 154 



Yeats, 71, 214 



Zaborowski, 197 
Zangwill, 123 
Zenker, 14 



JUL M 13V 



